The primary goals of our lab are 1) to understand the neurocognitive mechanisms of basic auditory perception, speech perception, and selective attention across the lifespan, and 2) to determine how attentional control and perceptual learning can lead to better perceptual outcomes, including understanding speech in background noise. To accomplish these goals, we use behavioral, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging measures in listeners ranging from 20 months to 85 years of age.

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Faculty Research Grant (Healey Endowment Grant) awarded

posted May 11, 2016, 6:36 AM by Lisa Sanders

We have been awarded a UMass FRG/HEG entitled Neural Measures of Real World Speech-in-Noise Processing. This grant will allow us to begin collecting electrophysiological data from children, young adults, and older adults in the field using portable headsets. The field-recorded data will provide critical information for designing future studies and demonstrating the feasibility of our proposed research in multiple grant applications to NIDCD, NIA, NICHD, and IES.

Ahren Fitzroy in JoCN

posted Nov 23, 2015, 7:15 AM by Lisa Sanders

Ahren's paper "Musical Meter Modulates the Allocation of Attention across Time" will appear in the December issue of Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. This is the first research to show different early perceptual processing of physically identical sounds at different levels of a metric hierarchy. Ahren wrote short melodies that directed temporal attention to downbeats. This important demonstration of the influence of rhythmic structure on the allocation of selective attention gives us an inkling of the complex patterns of temporal attention that must arise when listening to music and speech.

Welcome to our New Website

posted Oct 30, 2015, 10:06 AM by Lisa Sanders

I'm very excited to have a new webpage to go along with our new focus on using what we've learned about basic auditory perception and selective attention to help people better process important speech signals presented in noise. As part of that new focus, we're establishing new collaborations with researchers studying aging, communication disorders, and hearing-related technology. If that describes you, we'd be very happy to hear from you.

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