Ken Nakayama

Ken Nakayama is an American psychologist. Prior to retirement he was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is now an emeritus professor at Harvard, an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), and is also affiliated with the University of Bristol (UK).

Exploring the scientific basis of human Visual Perception, he conducted research on a variety of topics:  eye movements, motion processing, visual attention, visual processing of surfaces, face recognition, visual visuo- motor coordination to name a few (4).    The work on visual surfaces based on new perceptual demonstrations is possibly his best, characterizing an intermediate level of visual processing previously neglected. Nakayama is also known for his work on prosopagnosia (an inability to recognize faces) and super recognizers (people with significantly better-than-average face recognition ability). Almost all of his research efforts were done with collaborators.