The auditory system must integrate across many different temporal scales to derive meaning from complex natural sounds such as speech and music. A key challenge is that sound structures – such as phonemes, syllables, and words in speech – have highly variable durations. As a consequence, there is a fundamental difference between integrating across absolute time (e.g., a 100-millisecond window) vs. integrating across sound structure (e.g., a phoneme or word).

I propose that a field’s diversity is affected by what its members believe is required for success: Fields that value exceptional intellectual talent above all else may inadvertently obstruct the participation of women and (some) minority groups. The environment in these fields may be less welcoming to women and minority groups because of the cultural stereotypes that associate intellectual talent -- brilliance, genius, etc. -- with (white) men.

Auditory Ecology: Losing and restoring auditory contact with nature

The Cognitive Science Colloquium series is the most attended event of our department, hosting monthly talks by world-renowned experts in various fields of cognitive science, including neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, philosophy and anthropology.

Children’s differences in school performance have pervasive long-term influence on their education, health, and wellbeing. Children’s differences in school performance are evident from the first day of primary school and are relatively stable throughout the years of compulsory education. The major source of children’s differences in school performance is family background, not schools.

Abstract:

For a long time, economists have assumed that we were cold, self-centred, rational decision makers – so-called Homo economicus; the last few decades have shattered this view. The world we live in and the situations we face are of course rich and complex, revealing puzzling aspects of our behaviour. Optimally Irrational argues that our improved understanding of human behaviour shows that apparent 'biases' are good solutions to practical problems – that many of the 'flaws' identified by behavioural economics are actually adaptive solutions.

Music around the world is incredibly diverse, yet some musical features are widely shared. This raises a question: in what respects does music sound the same or different to people from different cultures? In this talk I will share the results of recent research with the Tsimane’, an indigenous Amazonian society in Bolivia who have limited exposure to Western music. This work suggests that there are several universal features of pitch and harmony perception that may constrain musical behavior around the world.

The function of sleep is arguably one of the last great unresolved questions in biology. One approach to tackle this question is to gain a more comprehensive understanding of how animals sleep in challenging environments.