Research Interests

My research entails two distinct research programs.  The first concerns investigating people with synaesthesia – a condition where ordinary stimuli lead to extraordinary experiences.  We have conducted research on numerous forms of synaesthesia including grapheme-colour synaesthesia where ordinary black digits or letters are experienced in colour, and time-space synaesthesia where time units, like months of the year, are associated with highly specific spatial locations (e.g., June is 30 degrees to the left of midline).  A second research program involves investigating gambling behaviour.  Specifically we have looked at some of the features of slot machines that make them so alluring, and for a small set of the population, so addictive.

Funding sources: Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre; NSERC; Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada

Problem gambling web page:  http://problemgambling.uwaterloo.ca/

Synaesthesia Research Centre web page: http://watarts.uwaterloo.ca/~src/home.htm

Selected Publications

• Dixon, M.J., Harrigan, K.A., Sandhu, R., Collins, K., & Fugelsang, J.A. (in press, 2010). Losses disguised as wins in modern multi-line video slot machines. Addiction
• Dixon, M. J., Smilek, D. & Merikle, P. M. (2004) Not all synaesthetes are created equal: Projector versus associator synaesthetes. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 4(3), 335-343.
• Dixon, M. J., Desmarais, G., Gojmerac, C., Schweizer, T. A. & Bub, D. N. (2002) The Role of premorbid expertise on object identification in a patient with category-specific visual agnosia. Cognitive Neuropsychology, 19, 401-419.
• Dixon, M. J., Smilek, D. Cudahy, C. & Merikle, P. M. (2000)  Five plus two equals yellow. Nature, 406, 365.