Masterarbeitsthemen

Beschreibung: Crying is an infant's only means of eliciting a reaction from caregivers, and it has been argued that it evolved to achieve this function. Newborn infants have been shown to cry with a melody that reflects the environmental language they experienced during gestation. This reflects the remarkable fact the gestating fetus has a functioning auditory system after six months of gestational age and that cognitive mechanisms are in place that can support learning of auditory stimuli, in utero. It has been claimed that tuning of the infant vocal repertoire to reflect the environmental language is a useful precursor to learning to speak. However, it is also possible that there are more immediate benefits to the infant of accented crying. The goal of this project is to examine two questions relating to infants? cries. I) Are natively accented vocalisations more salient to caregivers (and potential caregivers) than non-natively accented ones? II) Does crying with a native-accent reduce the aversiveness of infant cries to adult listeners?
Kontakt: Alexis Hervais-Adelman, E-Mail

Beschreibung: It has increasingly come to be recognised that there is a functional relationship between the speech motor system and the speech perception system. In particular, some theories of speech perception suggest that when the speech signal is acoustically challenging to understand the articulatory motor system can provide support for comprehension. This concept remains controversial, and one relatively straightforward means of testing the relationship between the auditory system and the articulatory system is to evaluate whether articulatory control predicts auditory performance. In this project, for which data can be collected online, we will test these relationships. Findings will help to inform theories of speech comprehension and the development of cognitive training strategies for individuals who suffer from hearing impairment.
Kontakt: Alexis Hervais-Adelman, E-Mail

Beschreibung: Reduced comprehension ability is a major consequence of hearing impairments which can have dramatic consequences for quality of life. Our project aims at gaining fundamental knowledge on the neurocognitive basis of our ability to comprehend degraded speech in acoustically challenging situations. Our experiment uses electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate patterns of electrophysiological activity associated with better speech in noise comprehension. Real-time EEG analysis will be used to trigger stimuli presentation when participants show specific brain-states. Comparing performance in those brain-dependent trials vs independent trials will help us defining targets for future neurofeedback-based studies.

Kontakt: Gorka Fraga Gonzalez, E-Mail

Beschreibung: It is well known that we are able to use visual information to help us understand speech in acoustically challenging situations, such as lip-reading in the presence of reverberation or background noise. This project will investigate whether other forms of visual input can assist speech comprehension in noise in the same way. We will test various forms of visual input that might serve to enhance the intelligibility of speech
In this project we aim to investigate the utility of various forms of visual input that can be presented in tandem with an auditory signal, in order to help enhance its intelligibility.

Kontakt: Alexis Hervais-Adelman, E-Mail