Staff profile

Bio

I graduated in Psychology at the University of Turin (Italy) and I studied for my Ph.D. in Psychology at both the University of Genoa (Italy) and Nice (France). I then worked for a few years in Italy as a Clinical Psychologist and Neuropsychologist, and as an Associate Teaching Fellow, before pursuing again my academic path. After working as a postdoctoral researcher in France and in the UK, I took a lectureship in Psychology at Keele University in 2019 and I joined Durham University in September 2022. 

I am a Chartered Psychologist in Italy, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the Vision Science Society.

Student supervision and research collaboration

I am always happy to discuss about ongoing research projects or new projects. Please drop me an email if you are interested to have a chat about working with me as a research assistant, research project student or Ph.D. student, or to discuss about potential collaborations.

• links between visual attention, perception and memory
• real-world scene and object processing
• eye movements
• cerebral hemispheric functional specialisation
• lifespan
• healthy and clinical populations

Journal Article

• Spotorno, S., & Tatler, B. W. (2025). What's left of the leftward bias in scene viewing? Lateral asymmetries in information processing during early search guidance. Cognition, 254, Article 106009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.106009
• Poncet, M., Spotorno, S., & Jackson, M. C. (2024). Competition between emotional faces in visuospatial working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001330
• Ramzaoui, H., Faure, S., David, R., & Spotorno, S. (2022). Top-down and bottom-up sources of eye-movement guidance during realistic scene search in Alzheimer’s disease. Neuropsychology, 36(7), https://doi.org/10.1037/neu0000797
• Ramzaoui, H., Faure, S., & Spotorno, S. (2022). Age-related differences when searching in a real environment: The use of semantic contextual guidance and incidental object encoding. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 75(10), https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218211064887
• Leroy, A., Spotorno, S., & Faure, S. (2021). Traitements sémantiques et émotionnels des scènes visuelles complexes : une synthèse critique de l’état actuel des connaissances. L'Année psychologique, Vol. 121(1), https://doi.org/10.3917/anpsy1.211.0101
• Leroy, A., Spotorno, S., & Faure, S. (2021). Emotional scene processing in children and adolescents with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder: a systematic review. European Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 30(3), https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01480-0
• Ramzaoui, H., Faure, S., & Spotorno, S. (2021). Top-down and bottom-up guidance in normal aging during scene search. Psychology and Aging, 36(4), https://doi.org/10.1037/pag0000485
• Leroy, A., Faure, S., & Spotorno, S. (2020). Reciprocal semantic predictions drive categorization of scene contexts and objects even when they are separate. Scientific Reports, 10(1), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-65158-y
• Ramzaoui, H., Faure, S., & Spotorno, S. (2018). Alzheimer’s Disease, Visual Search, and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living: A Review and a New Perspective on Attention and Eye Movements. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 66(3), https://doi.org/10.3233/jad-180043
• Spotorno, S., Evans, M., & Jackson, M. C. (2018). Remembering who was where: A happy expression advantage for face identity-location binding in working memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 44(9), https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000522
• Spotorno, S., & Tatler, B. W. (2017). The elephant in the room: Inconsistency in scene viewing and representation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 43(10), https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0000456
• Spotorno, S., Masson, G. S., & Montagnini, A. (2016). Fixational saccades during grating detection and discrimination. Vision Research, 118, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2015.03.013
• Spotorno, S., Malcolm, G., & Tatler, B. (2015). Disentangling the effects of spatial inconsistency of targets and distractors when searching in realistic scenes. Journal of Vision, 15(2), https://doi.org/10.1167/15.2.12
• Spotorno, S., Malcolm, G., & Tatler, B. (2014). How context information and target information guide the eyes from the first epoch of search in real-world scenes. Journal of Vision, 14(2), https://doi.org/10.1167/14.2.7
• Spotorno, S., Tatler, B. W., & Faure, S. (2013). Semantic consistency versus perceptual salience in visual scenes: Findings from change detection. Acta Psychologica, 142(2), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.12.009
• Spotorno, S., & Faure, S. (2011). The right hemisphere advantage in visual change detection depends on temporal factors. Brain and Cognition, 77(3), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2011.09.003
• Spotorno, S., & Faure, S. (2011). Change Detection in Complex Scenes: Hemispheric Contribution and the Role of Perceptual and Semantic Factors. Perception, 40(1), https://doi.org/10.1068/p6524