About me

I'm a postdoctoral research associate at the Cognitive Ageing and Impairment Neurosciences (CAIN) laboratory, which is part of the Behaviour Brain Body (BBB) research centre at the University of South Australia.

I am interested in the (1) the application of virtual reality to develop or enhance real-world skills, (2) investigating the aftereffects people may experience from using virtual reality devices, and (3) the application and analysis of mobile eye-tracking in complex real world scenes.

What am I working on?

I am currently focusing on virtual reality (VR) aftereffects to characterise and understand how people may be affected by using head-mounted displays (HMDs). VR has many potential benefits for a wide range of industry, clinical, and research applications. Yet about 15 to 20 % of people report symptoms of motion sickness (or VR sickness) hindering their experience and motivation to use VR in the future. Many people will also experience visual and cognitive aftereffects, which are more difficult to detect but can also contribute to a safety risk for subsequent activities. I aim to investigate these visual and cognitive aftereffects and understand how they may impact on an individual's ability to coordinate actions, make decisions and perform complex tasks.

I am also coordinating projects on VR training in sports, rehabilitation, relaxation, and vocational skills development. For more details see my research tab.

How did I come to be here?

After immigrating to Australia from South Africa in 2009, I started an Honours in Psychology at Flinders University. I was supervised by two exceptional mentors, Professor Mike Nicholls and Dr Tobias Loetscher, who continue to support and inspire me. My Honours thesis was about how other people in our environment can influence our spatial attention. This topic sparked my curiosity in behavioural research and a fascination with acquiring new insight by combining different subject areas. I felt there was more to learn and continued on to do a PhD with Professor Nicholls and Dr Loetscher. My PhD focused on how close interpersonal distances and social preferences can influence how we pay attention to our environment.

After my maternity leave, I was very fortunate to have a position working with Professor Martin Westwell, who stimulates curiosity and creative thinking in everyone around him. Through him, I developed a great appreciation for applied psychology and during my time working with Professor Westwell, my idea of studying virtual reality aftereffects emerged.

In 2018, I started a post-doc position with Dr Loetscher at the University of South Australia. During this time, I have led the development of virtual reality and eye-tracking research projects. There is more information about these projects under the research tab on the left. I am also grateful for the support and mentoring from Professor Mark Billinghurst at the University of South Australia.

I feel incredibly lucky to have had such wonderful supervisors and mentors. I have great respect and gratitude to all my mentors for their generosity, time, support, imagination and inspiration.

How can you reach me?

You can find me on twitter @AncretS

Email me at: myfirstname.mylastname@unisa.edu.au