Jukka Hyona PhD

Jukka Hyönä received his PhD degree in psychology in 1993 from the University of Turku (Finland), where he now serves as a professor of psychology and as the Head of the Psychology division.

His main research focus is on the use of the eye-tracking method to study various visually based cognitive tasks, including, reading and text comprehension, multiple object tracking, attentional capture and recognition of peripherally presented stimuli. The emphasis is on capturing how processing of visual stimuli evolves over time. To date, his most significant scientific contributions have been made to the study of how the eyes (and visual attention) are guided through a written text. In that domain, his studies tap into different levels of written language comprehension – from word recognition via sentence parsing to comprehension of long expository texts. He has also applied the method to study attentional processes and eye guidance during reading. His research has been published in journals such as Journal of Memory and Language, Psychological Science, and Cognitive Psychology. He has published about 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Together with Johanna Kaakinen, he has been one of the first to apply the eye-tracking method to investigate the processing of long expository texts as well as learning from authentic illustrated textbooks (in collaboration with Matti Hannus). Together with Manuel Calvo and Lauri Nummenmaa, he has successfully applied the method to examine whether peripherally presented emotional scenes capture the visual attention. Moreover, Oksama and Hyönä put forth a mathematically formulated model (MOMIT) of multiple identity tracking. At the moment, they are testing the seriality assumption of the model with eye movement registrations.