Liam Jordan
Social timing, gaze perception, and individual differences
University of Leicester
I study how brief temporal intervals shape perception and behaviour, with a particular focus on gaze duration, individual differences, and whether socially meaningful timing is supported by one general clock or a structured set of duration-sensitive processes.
Gaze duration is not only a social judgement. It is a timing judgement with social meaning.
My PhD asks whether the timing structure recovered from gaze-duration judgements resembles a broad general timing source, a set of duration-sensitive channels, or a partly distinct social-timing architecture.
What changes?
In a gaze sequence, very small differences in how long direct gaze is held can alter whether the signal feels like a glance, an intentional look, or sustained attention.
What is measured?
Rather than only averaging accuracy, I examine how people vary across duration levels, and whether nearby durations share more variance than distant durations.
Why it matters
Individual differences are treated as evidence about the architecture of timing, not as statistical noise to be averaged away.
Current doctoral work
Social timing
Psychophysical tasks test how people discriminate brief direct-gaze intervals in dynamic face sequences.
Latent structure
Covariance across duration levels is used to test whether performance looks like one general timing source or multiple duration-sensitive processes.
Benchmarking
Gaze-duration performance is compared with an existing non-social Gabor timing benchmark to ask what is shared and what is socially specific.
PhD timeline
ESRC Midlands Graduate School DTP, October 2025 to September 2029.
Calculating...
ProtocolDock as research infrastructure
ProtocolDock is a full-stack research operations platform with an integrated LaTeX writing environment, project and file management, participant and ethics workflows, version history, collaboration tools, analysis support, and administrative tooling. I am the sole developer, responsible for the architecture, database design, implementation, interface design, deployment planning, and ongoing development.
On this site, ProtocolDock is presented as part of my research profile: evidence of full-stack software development, workflow design, technical independence, and practical engagement with how research documents, protocols, version history, and governance records are managed.
Latest posts
Fresh eyes wanted: help shape ProtocolDock
ProtocolDock has moved beyond alpha and beta, and I am now looking for fresh testers to scrutinise the platform properly. Selected testers will receive one year of Researcher-level access for free in exchange for honest, detailed feedback.
ProtocolDock is now live
ProtocolDock is now live and available to use. It is still actively being developed, with new features, refinements, and improvements being added as the platform grows.