Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Musical Instrument Familiarity Affects Statistical Learning Of Tone Sequences., Stephen C Van Hedger, Ingrid Johnsrude, Laura J Batterink
Musical Instrument Familiarity Affects Statistical Learning Of Tone Sequences., Stephen C Van Hedger, Ingrid Johnsrude, Laura J Batterink
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Most listeners have an implicit understanding of the rules that govern how music unfolds over time. This knowledge is acquired in part through statistical learning, a robust learning mechanism that allows individuals to extract regularities from the environment. However, it is presently unclear how this prior musical knowledge might facilitate or interfere with the learning of novel tone sequences that do not conform to familiar musical rules. In the present experiment, participants listened to novel, statistically structured tone sequences composed of pitch intervals not typically found in Western music. Between participants, the tone sequences either had the timbre of artificial, …
Semantic Memory, Eiling Yee, Michael N. Jones, Ken Mcrae
Semantic Memory, Eiling Yee, Michael N. Jones, Ken Mcrae
Psychology Publications
How is it that we know what a dog and a tree are, or, for that matter, what knowledge is? Our semantic memory consists of knowledge about the world, including concepts, facts and beliefs. This knowledge is essential for recognizing entities and objects, and for making inferences and predictions about the world. In essence, our semantic knowledge determines how we understand and interact with the world around us. In this chapter, we examine semantic memory from cognitive, sensorimotor, cognitive neuroscientific, and computational perspectives. We consider the cognitive and neural processes (and biases) that allow people to learn and represent concepts, …
Sleep-Based Memory Processing Facilitates Grammatical Generalization: Evidence From Targeted Memory Reactivation., Laura J Batterink, Ken A Paller
Sleep-Based Memory Processing Facilitates Grammatical Generalization: Evidence From Targeted Memory Reactivation., Laura J Batterink, Ken A Paller
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Generalization-the ability to abstract regularities from specific examples and apply them to novel instances-is an essential component of language acquisition. Generalization not only depends on exposure to input during wake, but may also improve offline during sleep. Here we examined whether targeted memory reactivation during sleep can influence grammatical generalization. Participants gradually acquired the grammatical rules of an artificial language through an interactive learning procedure. Then, phrases from the language (experimental group) or stimuli from an unrelated task (control group) were covertly presented during an afternoon nap. Compared to control participants, participants re-exposed to the language during sleep showed larger …
Perceptual Fluency Can Be Used As A Cue For Categorization Decisions., Sarah J Miles, John Paul Minda
Perceptual Fluency Can Be Used As A Cue For Categorization Decisions., Sarah J Miles, John Paul Minda
Brain and Mind Institute Researchers' Publications
Learning in the prototype distortion task is thought to involve perceptual learning in which category members experience an enhanced visual response (Ashby & Maddox. Annual Review of Psychology, 56, 149-178, 2005). This response likely leads to more-efficient processing, which in turn may result in a feeling of perceptual fluency for category members. We examined the perceptual-fluency hypothesis by manipulating fluency independently from category membership. We predicted that when perceptual fluency was induced using subliminal priming, this fluency would be misattributed to category membership and would affect categorization decisions. In a prototype distortion task, the participants were more likely to judge …