Mechanisms of multisensory integration and attention

Spatial attention is an essential mechanism that helps us perceive our surroundings by bringing into consciousness environmental occurrences or objects that may be of importance. Studies of spatial attention have classically recorded behavioural responses to targets presented in a region of space where attention had previously been allocated to. Such investigations show a behavioural facilitation at the same location due to cueing, but less in known about the effects of shifts of attention when the cued location is not the location of interest. This thesis presents seven experiments aimed at investigating this by implementing and revising the attentional repulsion effect (ARE). The ARE is a perceptual localisation error when attention is diverted from the region of interest and it has been extensively studied in the visual domain, however, the rising number of ARE studies has created numerous research methodologies used to evoke the effect, which may have led to isolated reports. This thesis attempts to combine past methodologies with a new approach to quantify the effect, and will address some methodological differences evident in the literature, in order to optimise the stimulus paradigms and maximise the effect. The results show that a robust ARE can be elicited in the visual modality, but the same is not observed in the auditory modality. Furthermore, when using cues that are of different modality than the targets, the ARE is only observed in the visual target modality. Using visual cues and auditory targets will produce an attraction effect, in line with the ventriloquism theory. However, the implementation of interstimuli intervals up to 1.5 seconds would be enough to disrupt the ventriloquism illusion, but it did not alter the resulted attraction. Lastly, one question regarding the role of attention in sensory adaptation was addressed. I hypothesise that sensory adaptation could be further a contributor to the ARE given that most psychophysics paradigms of the ARE repeat the same stimuli thousands of times, uninterruptedly. The results are inconclusive mainly due to experimental design. All results are discussed in relation with theories of spatial and multimodal attention

2014-2015 Undergraduate Catalog

https://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/g_cat/1027/thumbnail.jp

Legibility of Musical Scores and Parallels with Language Reading

Following on the extensive literature within experimental psychology on the reading of natural language texts, I have undertaken a series of experiments on the sight-reading of musical scores that have shown that spacing of information, the structuring of the musical discourse, and the predictability of design in a score can aid its legibility in a manner similar to what has been shown in the language domain. Cultural studies of reading —particularly the works of Saenger— point in the same direction; according to these, the change in Medieval textual scripts from scriptura continua at the beginning of the eight century to the adoption of canonical separations between words, phrases, or paragraphs (which had fully spread throughout Europe by the mid-fourteenth century) significantly decreased the cognitive load and time that had previously been needed to decode a script. Crucially, this eliminated the need for the ancient techniques of the praelectio (initial decoding of the text by reading it aloud) and rote repetition for its comprehension, triggering a whole new culture of private fluent reading. Equally, the literature on music sight-reading (although lacking in systematic research based on objective measurements of legibility of texts) has proposed, based on surveys and studies of expertise, a series of cognitive models of the activity that prime, as factors that distinguish proficient readers from beginners: the integration of discursive elements into higher-order meaning units, the ability to predict upcoming information, and the awareness of the structuring of the text. The experiments reported here compared readings using conventional scores with readings using novel scores where the suggested advantages of information separation, integration and predictability were implemented in the design. Fluency of performance was measured primarily in terms of numbers of mistakes, results showing that readers played more accurately with the novel scores. Other, more qualitative, measurements —such as spectrogram coding of tempo stability, blind expert judgment of performance quality, and participant self-assessments— all showed strong positive correlations with the measurements of numbers of mistakes, with the novel scores producing performances that were more fluent and ranked as more trustworthy and musically satisfactory by experts and readers alike. These results will still need to be extrapolated to many other musical practices, but they serve to open a debate on the conventions of music publishing as they stand, and are well placed to open new lines of research in score legibility and design.Cambridge Home and EU Scholarship Scheme (CHESS

Studies in the Linguistic Foundations of Thought in Early Irish Tradition

The thesis investigates early Irish views on the concepts of thought and cognition through the lens of philosophy of language. It aims to establish how problems of linguistic expression relate to the understanding of mental activity in early Irish learned tradition (ca. 650–1100), particularly in such discourse-oriented disciplines as grammar and biblical exegesis. Irish contributions to this topic offer a unique perspective on the relationship between language and thought, not least due to the thriving bilingualism of Irish intellectual tradition. Therefore, this study brings together Latin and vernacular evidence and traces links between ideas expressed in both languages. The study has a tripartite structure which moves from the views on the material aspects of language, towards Irish theories of meaning, and onwards to ideas that imagine thought itself as a special kind of language. The first part centres around Irish approaches to phonology, writing systems and criteria that define a word. It aims to explore the ways in which Irish grammarians considered the material aspects of language to establish basic mental mechanisms for the creation and processing of meaning. Part two surveys evidence for Irish theories of signification and investigates problems of the relationship between form, meaning and thought. The final part considers Irish language-philosophical theories which connect language and cognition, namely the techniques of non-literal exegesis and the concept of ‘mental speech’ – a metaphorical device which presents thought patterns in terms of language patterns. Overall, the thesis offers the first comprehensive study of the intersection of philosophy of language and philosophy of mind in early Irish intellectual tradition