Month: January 2022

Postdoc and Research Coordinator Positions at UConn

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Dr. Ido Davidesco at UConn’s Learning Sciences Program is recruiting a postdoc and a research coordinator for a recently funded NSF project on the role of internal attention in STEM learning. The project involves EEG and eye-tracking in both laboratory and classroom settings. 

For more information:
Please share this opportunity with colleagues and students in your network.
Contact Dr. Davidesco (ido.davidesco@uconn.edu) for additional information. 

COGS & ECOM: Ani Patel 2/11

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Please mark your calendars for our next talk as we will be hosting Prof. Aniruddh Patel (Dept. of Psychology, Tufts Univ.) on Feb 11 (Friday) between 4-5:30 pm (EST) via Zoom as part of our ECOM Speaker Series. The title of his talk is “The speech-to-song illusion: acoustic foundations and individual differences.” Prof. Patel’s talk is co-sponsored by The Cognitive Science Program. Below, you can find the abstract of his talk, along with the event link.
Prof. Patel told us he’d be happy to meet virtually to discuss issues related to his research. There are a couple of slots available to meet with him on Feb 11, Friday, between 12:15 pm – 1:15 pm, and on Feb 14, Monday, between 10:30 am – 11:30 am, and 2:30 pm – 4:30 pm. If you’d like to meet with him, please let me know, and I’ll be happy to make the necessary arrangements. 
Abstract: Music often has salient acoustic differences from spoken and environmental sounds, especially with respect to patterns of pitch and timing. Research has shown humans can discriminate spoken and musical sounds within a fraction of second, and neuroimaging research has found distinct neural populations that respond to speech and music. These findings support the notion that music is a kind of sound, with distinct acoustic features and modes of neural processing. In this presentation I explore a phenomenon which challenges this view, and which suggests that music is a kind of perceptual experience, not a kind of sound. In the “speech to song illusion” certain spoken phrases, when played repeatedly, begin to vividly sound like song. Crucially, not all phrases transform in this way, and there are substantial individual differences in how strongly people experience the illusion. I will present research addressing why certain phrases transform more than others and why some listeners hear the illusion more strongly than others. While we have made some progress in answering these questions, much about this illusion remains mysterious, raising questions about why certain sounds are experienced as music.

COGS & IBACS Colloquium: Dr. John Hale on 2/18

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The CT Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences and The Cognitive Science Program are excited to jointly host a talk by Dr. John Hale, professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Georgia.
 
Details can be found below but please note that the choice between an in-person or online talk online has not yet been made so please look out for further details. 
Time: 4pm, Friday, February 18
Talk Title: “Grammar, Incrementality and fMRI Timecourse”
If you have any questions or would like to meet with Dr. Hale, please contact Whit Tabor at whitney.tabor@uconn.edu.