Hi, I'm Sarah Herald. I joined the Image Understanding Lab as an undergradaute research assisstant in August 2012, and graduated from USC in May 2015. I am currently a graduate student in Brad Duchaine's Social Perception Lab at Dartmouth College.

My research in the Image Understanding Laboratory focused on three main areas.

1. How does the brain recognize objects?

2. How does the brain process faces?

3. I have also been involved in studying developmental phonagnosia, the inability to identify or recognize familiar voices, such as family members or celebrities.

My current research in Brad Duchaine's lab focuses on two main areas.

1. How does the brain integrate information across the left and right visual field, which are divided early on in visual cortex?
2. What can we learn about face processing from acquired prosopagnosics, who have damage to regions of the brain that interrupt normal face processing?

Publications

• Margalit, E., Biederman, I., Herald, S. B., Yue, X., & von der Malsburg, C. (2016). An applet for the Gabor scaling of the differences between complex stimuli. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics. 78(8), 2298-2306. doi:10.3758/s13414-016-1191-7. [Link]
• Xu, X., Biederman, I., Shilowich, B. E., Herald, S. B., Amir, O., Allen, N. E. (2015). Developmental phonagnosia: neural correlates and a behavioral marker. Brain & Language, 149, 106-117. [Link]
• Herald, S. B., Xu, X., Biederman, I., Amir, O., & Shilowich, B. E. (2014). Phonagnosia: A voice homologue to prosopagnosia. Visual Cognition, 22:8, 1031-1033. DOI: 10.1080/13506285.2014.960670. [Link]
• Amir, O., Biederman, I., Herald, S. B., Shah, M. P., & Mintz, T. H. (2014). Greater sensitivity to nonaccidental than metric shape properties in preschool children. Vision Research, 97, 83-88. [Link]

Conference Presentations

• Herald, S. B., Yang, H., Duchaine, B. (2017). Contralateral bias persists in category-selective visual areas. Poster to be presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg Beach, Fl. May. [Abstract]
• Margalit, E., Herald, S.B., Juarez, J.J., Yue, X., & Biederman, I. (2016). What might be the General Visual Deficit that Underlies Developmental Prosopagnosia? Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg Beach, Fl. May. [Poster]
• Irawan, I., Margalit, E., Meschke, E., Herald, S.B., & Biederman, I. (2016). Vertices are Effective in Perceptual Grouping (and Ungrouping) in Object Recognition. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg Beach, Fl. May. [Poster]
• Herald, S. B., Shah, M. P., Xu, X., Biederman, I., Juarez, J. J. (2015). A neurocomputational account of the magnitude of face composite effects. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg Beach, Fl. May. [Poster]
• Biederman, I., Herald, S. B., Xu, X., Amir, O., and Shilowich B. E. (2015). Phonagnosia, a Voice Homologue to Prosopagnosia. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg Beach, Fl. May. [Poster]
• Biederman, I., Xu, X., Shah, M. P., & Herald, S. B. (2015). A Neurocomputational Account of the Face Configural Effect. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, Charlottesville, VA. April.
• Herald, S. B., Xu, X., Biederman, I., Amir, O., Shilowich, B. E. (2014). Phonagnosia: A Voice Homologue to Prosopagnosia. Talk presented at the Annual Workshop on Object Perception, Attention, and Memory. Long Beach, CA. November.
• Shah, M. P., Xu, X., Herald, S. B., & Biederman, I. (2014). A neurocomputational account of the face configural and composite effects. Poster presented at the 2014 Annual Workshop on Object Perception, Attention, and Memory, Long Beach, California. November. [Poster]
• Biederman, I., Xu. X., Shah, M. P., & Herald, S. B. (2014). Why Faces but not Objects Exhibit Configural Effects. Paper presented at the Annual Configural Processing Consortium, Los Angeles, CA. November.
• Herald, S. B., Shah, M. S., Amir, O., & Biederman, I. (2014). Greater sensitivity to nonaccidental than metric shape properties in preschool children. Poster presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg Beach, Fl. May. [Poster]
• Biederman, I., Xu, X., Shah, M. P., & Herald, S. B. (2014). An Account of the Face Configural Effect. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Vision Sciences Society, St. Petersburg Beach, Fl. May.
• Biederman, I., Xu, X., Herald, S. B., Shilowich, B. E., Amir, O., & Allen, N. E. (2014). Developmental Phonagnosia. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Experimental Psychologists, Los Angeles. April.
• Biederman, I., Xu, X., Herald, S. B., Shilowich, B. E., Amir, O., & Allen, N. E. (2013). Developmental phonagnosia implicates a neural correlate for perceiving speaker identity. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Neuroscience, San Diego. November.

Honors and Awards

• NSF GRFP -- 2017    [Dartmouth news story]

  "The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines... Fellows benefit from a three-year annual stipend of $34,000 along with a $12,000 cost of education allowance for tuition and fees (paid to the institution), opportunities for international research and professional development, and the freedom to conduct their own research at any accredited U.S. institution of graduate education they choose."

• USC Discovery Scholar -- May 2015

  "Honors students who excel in the classroom while demonstrating the ability to create exceptional new scholarship or artistic works."

• USC Neuroscience Outstanding Student of the Year Award -- April 2015

  Awarded to the top neuroscience graduating senior

• Brian Phillip Rakusin Neuroscience Scholarship Award -- April 2014

  "This award was established in memory of Brian Phillip Rakusin, USC's first Neuroscience Major. The scholarship is awarded each year to the most outstanding Neuroscience student who will be on campus for at least one more year after receiving the award. Successful candidates must demonstrate outstanding achievements and aspirations in the field of Neuroscience."

• USC Provost's Undergraduate Research Fellowships

  Received every Fall, Spring, and Summer, from Fall 2012 to Spring 2015

• USC Trustee Scholar

  Full tuition scholarship to USC

News Stories

• A Computational Advantage. By Laura Paisley. USC Dornsife News. http://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/1708/a-computational-advantage/
• Are you face blind? By Erica Fox. Fox 5 San Diego News. http://fox5sandiego.com/2013/08/01/are-you-face-blind/

Contact Information

Sarah Herald
Moore Hall 6207
Hanover, NH 03755
Email: Sarah.B.Herald.GR@dartmouth.edu