The role of dimension-selective attention in auditory category learning

Adam Tierney (primary)
Psychological Sciences
Birkbeck College
Fred Dick (secondary)
Psychological Sciences
Birkbeck College

Abstract

When perceiving speech, music, and environmental sounds, listeners map continuous variation across acoustic dimensions onto discrete categories. This categorization process is a vital component of our ability to navigate the auditory world, but little is known about its underlying neural and cognitive mechanisms. Here we propose to use newly developed EEG techniques, including frequency-tagging of acoustic dimensions and multi-dimensional temporal response function analysis, to test the hypothesis that during auditory categorization attention is directed towards auditory dimensions that are highly diagnostic of category membership.


References

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3) Rehder B, Hoffman A (2005) Eyetracking and selective attention in category learning. Cognitive Psychology 51, 1-41.

4) Symons A, Dick F, Tierney A. (2021) bioRxiv. doi:10.1101/2021.05.10.443391

5) Broderick M, Anderson A, Lalor R (2019) Semantic context enhances the early auditory encoding of natural speech. Journal of Neuroscience 39, 7564-7575.


BBSRC Area
Genes, development and STEM* approaches to biology
Area of Biology
Neurobiology
Techniques & Approaches
Microscopy / Electrophysiology