Stimulus Familiarity and Attentional Effects on the Neural Organization of Auditory Categorical Perception

Categorical perception (CP) is the ability to make a comparative judgment on two or more sounds based on stored auditory perceptual information. CP has been shown to be influential on the expression of language proficiency and other cognitive processes such as reading. Prior research has shown that CP is impacted by attention and specific stimulus characteristics, with conflicting results purporting the expression of CP to occur under contradictory conditions. The current investigation examined the expression of neural and behavioral CP under different listening conditions (i.e., passive vs. active tasks) and during engagement with speech and music stimuli. Our results indicate that CP is influenced by attention (active \u3e passive) and is stronger for more familiar stimulus domains (speech \u3e music). Thus, CP does not generalize to other domains in which a listener is not experienced in and it requires a listener to be actively engaged with the auditory stimulus

Speech-in-speech perception, non-verbal selective attention, and musical training

Speech is more difficult to understand when it is presented concurrently with a distractor speech stream. One source of this difficulty is that competing speech can act as an attentional lure, requiring listeners to exert attentional control to ensure that attention does not drift away from the target. Stronger attentional control may enable listeners to more successfully ignore distracting speech, and so individual differences in selective attention may be one factor driving the ability to perceive speech in complex environments. However, the lack of a paradigm for measuring non-verbal sustained selective attention to sound has made this hypothesis difficult to test. Here we find that individuals who are better able to attend to a stream of tones and respond to occasional repeated sequences while ignoring a distractor tone stream are also better able to perceive speech masked by a single distractor talker. We also find that participants who have undergone more musical training show better performance on both verbal and non-verbal selective attention tasks, and this musician advantage is greater in older participants. This suggests that one source of a potential musician advantage for speech perception in complex environments may be experience or skill in directing and maintaining attention to a single auditory object

Effets des activités musicales sur la perception de la parole dans le bruit

La perception de la parole dans le bruit (PPB) décline avec l'âge, entraînant des difficultés à communiquer dans des lieux bruyants. À ce jour, il n'existe aucune stratégie pour limiter efficacement les effets de l'âge sur la PPB. Toutefois, la pratique musicale, par son entraînement auditif et cognitif, représente un outil de prévention potentiel. L'objectif de ce mémoire était d'étudier l'effet de la pratique musicale (instrument de musique, chant) sur la PPB. La première étude présente une revue systématique et une méta-analyse de la littérature existante sur les effets de la pratique musicale sur la PPB. Dans la deuxième étude, des musiciens amateurs jeunes (18-59 ans) et âgés (>60 ans) ont été comparés à des individus pratiquant une activité psychomotrice non musicale de niveau amateur. La méta-analyse a montré que l'effet de la pratique musicale varie en fonction des conditions expérimentales de PPB, apportant des avantages en présence de bruits masquants (BM) énergétiques, de BM de parole à deux et quatre locuteurs et lorsque le BM est de même intensité ou plus fort que la parole. Toutefois, la revue systématique a mis en lumière le manque d'études sur des adultes âgés et sur des musiciens amateurs. La deuxième étude a montré qu'une pratique musicale de niveau amateur était associée à une meilleure performance en PPB chez les musiciens jeunes comme âgés, comparée à la pratique d'une activité psychomotrice, indépendamment de l'âge du début et du nombre d'années de pratique. En somme, ce mémoire a montré des bénéfices de la pratique musicale sur la PPB, qui se retrouvent chez des musiciens amateurs jeunes comme âgés. Ces résultats sont encourageants du point de vue de la prévention de la PPB, mais davantage d'études sont nécessaires pour confirmer ces résultats et éclaircir les différents paramètres de pratique qui mènent à des avantages en PPB

Kunnallisten orkesterimuusikkojen ensimmäinen valtakunnallinen työehtosopimus 1973 : Orkesterikohtaisista ratkaisuista työehtojen yhtenäistämiseen

Tutkielman tavoitteena on selittää Suomen kunnallisten orkesterien siirtymistä valtakunnalliseen kunta-alan työehtosopimusjärjestelmään vuonna 1973. Silloin kunnallisille orkesterimuusikoille solmittiin ensimmäisen kerran oma valtakunnallinen työehtosopimuksensa. Helsingin ja Turun kaupunginorkesterien muusikot jäivät sopimuksesta pois, koska orkesterit halusivat jatkaa virkasuhteisina. Tutkielmassa vastataan kysymyksiin kuten, miksi sopimus syntyi ja mikä oli sen sisältö ja merkitys. Tutkielman taustoitusosiossa luodaan konteksti työehtosopimukselle. Siinä eritellään tutkimuskirjallisuuden ja arkistomateriaalin avulla, kuinka kunnallisten orkesterimuusikkojen palvelussuhteiden ehdoista on sovittu Suomessa ennen 1970-lukua. Kysymys liittyy sekä kunnallisen orkesteri-instituution kehitykseen että suomalaisen työoikeuden kehitykseen. Vuoden 1973 työehtosopimusta tarkastellaan tutkielmassa historiallisen jatkumon osana, eikä sen merkitystä voi ymmärtää ilman ymmärrystä siitä, miten palvelussuhteiden ehdot ennen sopimusta muotoutuivat. Tutkielma on musiikin sosiaalihistoriaa, ja sen metodit ovat historiantutkimukselle ominaisia. Uutta tietoa luodaan pääosin arkistotutkimuksella, jota on täydennetty yksilöhaastatteluilla kerätyllä muistitiedolla. Arkistolähteinä toimivat ensisijaisesti Suomen Muusikkojen Liiton ja Kunnallisen sopimusvaltuuskunnan arkistoidut asiakirjat: muun muassa työehtosopimukset, toimintakertomukset ja hallituksen pöytäkirjat 1970-luvulta. Tutkimushaastateltavina ovat neuvotteluissa mukana olleet Suomen Muusikkojen Liiton ja Kunnallisen sopimusvaltuuskunnan edustajat, sekä muusikkoaktiivit niistä virkaorkestereista, jotka jäivät sopimuksen ulkopuolelle. Haastattelut toteutettiin henkilökohtaisissa tapaamisissa. Kokonaiskuvaa täydentää vähäinen aiheesta kirjoitettu kirjallisuus. Tutkielman johtopäätöksenä on, että kunnallisten orkesterimuusikkojen valtakunnallinen työehtosopimus 1973 syntyi yleisen yhteiskunnallisen kehityksen takia, mutta myös pitkäaikainen muusikkoedunvalvonta vaikutti asiaan. Vuonna 1970 perustettiin lailla Kunnallinen sopimusvaltuuskunta, jolle keskitettiin kuntien työehtosopimusasiat. Toisaalta orkesterimuusikkojen jo vuosikymmeniä jatkunut työehtosopimustoiminta ja edunvalvonta olivat syynä siihen, että orkesterimuusikot saivat luontevasti omanlaisensa sopimuksen myös tässä murroksessa. Itse sopimusneuvottelut kestivät huomattavasti suunniteltua pidempään, mutta sujuivat jouhevasti. Sopimuksen sisällöksi tuli ikään kuin kompromissi orkesterimuusikkojen aikaisemmista paikallisista sopimuksista. Vuoden 1973 valtakunnallista työehtosopimusta pidettiin erityisesti Suomen Muusikkojen Liiton keskuudessa merkittävänä edistysaskeleena. Se paitsi yhtenäisti valtakunnalliset työehdot myös loi yleisen suomalaisen käytännön orkesterimuusikkojen työehdoista. Tähän käytäntöön tulivat viittaamaan myös ei-kunnallisten orkesterien jäsenet. Työehtosopimus paransi monissa kunnissa orkesterimuusikkojen työehtoja. Se loi selkeän ja tukevan pohjan työehdoille, joita 1970-luvun kuluessa kohennettiin pikkuhiljaa

On the relationship between linguistic and musical processing. The case of scalar implicatures.

The interference between language and music has become a matter of study since the formulation of Patel\u2019s hypothesis (2003), that is the Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH). According to this framework, the processing of the syntax of both language and music requires the same neural resources, located in the frontal areas of the brain, whereas the representations associated to musical syntax are distinct from those associated to linguistic syntax, and involve distinct neural resources. In the last decades, both behavioral and neuroimaging works tested whether there is actually an interaction between language and music. From a purely syntactic perspective, some authors (Fedorenko et al. 2009, Slevc et al. 2009, Fiveash and Pammer, 2014, Hoch et al. 2011, Koelsch et al. 2005, Steinbeis and Koelsch, 2008a) confirmed SSIRH\u2019s predictions, while there is no general agreement on the results of the investigation of linguistic semantic processing interacting with simultaneously presented harmonic incongruities (see Besson et al. 1998, Bonnel et al. 2001, Poulin-Charronat et al. 2005). Until now, as far as we know, the relationship between pragmatic knowledge in language and musical grammar has not been tested, yet. In this thesis, I take up the following questions: Does implicit musical processing interfere with the computation of scalar implicatures? Is there any difference between musicians and non-musicians regarding the music/pragmatics potential interference? In providing an answer to my research questions, I will also test Relevance Theory predictions on the computation of scalar implicatures (implicatures are expected to be cognitively costly) by evaluating and assessing many previous studies in the field of experimental pragmatics. Study 1 is a statement evaluation task whose accuracy results show a worse performance of both groups (musicians and non-musicians) while processing scalar implicatures in the presence of music. Particularly, in RTs analysis, I found that non-musicians are slower compared to musicians when computing infelicitous sentences. My study generally confirms that pragmatically infelicitous sentences are more difficult to be computed than pragmatically felicitous sentences, according to the predictions made by Relevance Theory. As for the interaction between language and music a significant interaction of music in the infelicitous context has been found. However, I deepen the analysis by adding more musical conditions in the following study. Study 2, a sentence picture verification task, implements Study 1 because it tests the music/pragmatics interaction with respect to more musical conditions (no music condition, music in tune condition, out-of-key chord condition and loudness manipulation condition). Relevance Theory\u2019s predictions, according to which pragmatically infelicitous sentences are more difficult to process than pragmatically felicitous sentences, are further confirmed. Moreover, though an interference between language and music has clearly emerged, the interference emerging in my study manifested itself independently of the nature of the relevant musical condition, and more specifically, independently of whether the interfering music was in tune or with a dissonant target chord, differently from what emerged from a variety of studies testing the interference with strictly syntactic processing. In these studies, manipulating the musical condition, i.e. making musical processing more difficult by means of a dissonant target chord, has the effect of subtracting resources to syntactic processing of linguistic stimuli. Thus, it is possible to claim that as far as scalar implicature computations are involved, language interferes with music only at a general cognitive level (i.e. at the level of the general cognitive burden presupposed by some complex dual task) and not because musical syntax and scalar implicature processing consume the very same neural resources in the brain. As for the differences between musicians and non-musicians, in Study 2 no differences have been found concerning the performance of the two groups with respect to the different musical conditions. Interestingly, however, non-musicians had a worse performance than musicians while processing the infelicitous sentences. Overall, the results show that the computation of scalar implicatures is more difficult in the pragmatically infelicitous context than in the pragmatically felicitous context, as predicted by the Relevance Theory approach. Moreover, music interferes with pragmatic processing of linguistic stimuli. This happens only at a general cognitive level, in accordance with the relative complexity of a dual task involving both linguistic and musical stimuli, while the data do not support the hypothesis that the musical and the pragmatic computation revolve around the same network of neural resources in the brain. This can be straightforwardly interpreted as an important class of evidence for the SSIRH. Regarding the differences between musicians and non-musicians, I found that non-musicians have a worse performance both in terms of RT (Study 1) and of accuracy (Study 2), in the pragmatically infelicitous condition, with respect to musicians. This can be due to an experimental artefact but it might also be related to the cognitive benefits of musical training on the execution of the complex set of computations required by processing infelicitous sentences containing scalar terms

Audition, learning and experience: expertise through development

Our experience with the auditory world can shape and modify perceptual, cognitive and neural processes with respect to audition. Such experience can occur over multiple timescales, and can vary in its specificity and intensity. In order to understand how auditory perceptual, cognitive and neural processes develop, it is important to explore the different means through which experience can influence audition. This thesis aims to address these issues. Using an expertise framework, we explore how the auditory environment and ontogenetic factors can shape and guide perceptual, cognitive and neural processes through long- and short-term profiles of experience. In early chapters, we use expertly-trained musicians as a model for long-term experience accrued under specific auditory constraints. We find that expertise on a particular instrument (violin versus piano) yields training-specific auditory perceptual advantages in a musical context, as well as improvements to ‘low-level’ auditory acuity (versus non-musicians); yet we find limited generalisation of expertise to cognitive tasks that require some of the skills that musicians hone. In a subsequent chapter, we find that expert violinists (versus non-musicians) show subtle increases in quantitative MR proxies for cortical myelin at left auditory core. In latter chapters, we explore short-term sound learning. We ask whether listeners can learn combinations of auditory cues within an active visuo-spatial task, and whether development can mediate learning of auditory cue combinations or costs due to cue contingency violations. We show that auditory cue combinations can be learned within periods of minutes. However, we find wide variation in cue learning success across all experiments, with no differences in overall cue combination learning between children and adults. These experiments help to further understanding of auditory expertise, learning, development and plasticity, within an experience-based framework