Michael Pilling

Dr. Michael Pilling is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the School of Psychology, Social Work and Public Health, Oxford Brookes University, where he has worked since 2007. He holds a PhD from the University of Surrey and has prior experience at institutions including the University of Surrey, The Open University, and the MRC Institute of Hearing Research. He serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Cognitive Psychology.

His research focuses on visual cognition, particularly visual perception, object substitution masking (OSM), visual short-term memory (VSTM), and attentional processes. Current interests include how spatial cues affect change detection, the efficiency of comparison processes between VSTM and vision, and visual search for dynamic events. Notable projects include co-investigator work on the INTERLINKED Game Component funded by Counter Terrorism Policing (2024).

His recent publications (2024–2014) explore topics like spatial cue influence on change detection, feature changes in visual search, and the relationship between OSM and visual crowding. His work often bridges cognitive psychology with neuroscience, emphasizing perceptual mechanisms and memory.

Dr. Pilling supervises PhD candidates such as Alfred Veldhuis (thesis: 'The self-reference effect in perception and memory') and Sam Bond (active research on statistical learning constraints). He collaborates within the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience (C&CN) research group and contributes to interdisciplinary projects at DASOBU (Defence and Security at Oxford Brookes).