Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Theses/Dissertations

Psychology

Event-related potentials

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Benefits Of Spatial Separation On The Cortical Representations Of Speech Sounds, Benjamin H. Zobel Oct 2021

The Benefits Of Spatial Separation On The Cortical Representations Of Speech Sounds, Benjamin H. Zobel

Doctoral Dissertations

Spatial separation between competing speech streams reduces their confusion (informational masking) and improves speech processing under challenging listening conditions. The precise stages of auditory processing and the bottom-up and top-down mechanisms involved in this spatial release from informational masking are not fully understood. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to measure the cortical processing of relevant speech under conditions of informational masking and its spatial release, and to examine the preattentive and attentive mechanisms that benefit listeners. Participants were asked to detect noise-vocoded target speech presented with noise-vocoded two-talker masking speech. In separate conditions, the same set of targets were spatially …


Hearing And Seeing A Speaker: How Perceptual And Cognitive Factors Modulate The Dynamics Of Audiovisual Speech Perception, Elina Kaplan Oct 2018

Hearing And Seeing A Speaker: How Perceptual And Cognitive Factors Modulate The Dynamics Of Audiovisual Speech Perception, Elina Kaplan

Doctoral Dissertations

In face-to-face conversations, listeners process and combine speech information obtained from hearing and seeing the speaker talk. Audiovisual speech typically leads to more robust recognition of speech, as it provides more information for recognition but also as it helps listeners adjust to speaker idiosyncrasies. The goal of the current thesis was to examine how certain perceptual and cognitive factors modulate how listeners use visual speech to facilitate momentary speech perception and to adjust to a speaker’s idiosyncrasies. Results showed that (older) listeners’ sensitivity to cross-modal synchrony is related to the size of the audiovisual interactions during early perceptual processing. Furthermore, …


The Neural Correlates Of Stereotype Threat And The Stereotype Inoculation Model In Young Women, Chaia Flegenheimer Jul 2018

The Neural Correlates Of Stereotype Threat And The Stereotype Inoculation Model In Young Women, Chaia Flegenheimer

Doctoral Dissertations

A promising intervention technique for stereotype threat effects is the stereotype inoculation model (SIM), which utilizes in-group role models to counteract stereotype-induced pressures. However, it remains unclear how the SIM may impact neural mechanisms during stereotype threat, including negative feedback bias (increased attention to undesirable feedback). The following three studies aim to examine the behavioral (Study 1) and neural (Study 2) markers of ST in women and how these markers are influenced by the SIM (Study 3). In each study, participants completed a non-traditional math task (the approximate number task). In the first two studies, one group was told the …


The Effect Of Unique Labels On Face Perception In Infancy, Hillary R. Hadley Nov 2016

The Effect Of Unique Labels On Face Perception In Infancy, Hillary R. Hadley

Doctoral Dissertations

Faces are universally important for a variety of reasons, ranging from identifying individuals to conveying social information. During the first year of life, infants’ experience with commonly encountered face groups shapes how infants perceive familiar and unfamiliar faces. Between 6 and 9 months of age, infants become worse at differentiating among individual faces from unfamiliar face groups (e.g., other-species faces), a process known as “perceptual narrowing”. Labeling faces from a previously unfamiliar face group has been found to promote individual-level differentiation, as well as expert neural processing for the face group. However, it is currently unclear what influences individual-level labels …


Attention Modulates Erp Indices Of The Precedence Effect, Benjamin H. Zobel Nov 2014

Attention Modulates Erp Indices Of The Precedence Effect, Benjamin H. Zobel

Masters Theses

When presented with two identical sounds from different locations separated by a short onset asynchrony, listeners report hearing a single source at the location of the lead sound, a phenomenon called the precedence effect (Wallach et al., 1949; Haas, 1951). When the onset asynchrony is above echo threshold, listeners report hearing the lead and lag sounds as separate sources with distinct locations. Event-related potential (ERP) studies have shown that perception of separate sound sources is accompanied by an object-related negativity (ORN) 100-250 ms after onset and a late posterior positivity (LP) 300-500 ms after onset (Sanders et al., 2008; Sanders …