New paper! ⏰

21 March 2025

Are high perceptual demands during training necessary to drive auditory neural plasticity?

Engaging in activities that make strong demands on the precision of perception, like musical training or speaking a tone language, can enhance auditory neural encoding. But are high perceptual demands during training always necessary for driving auditory neural plasticity? We answered this question in the context of voice actors who exaggerate prosodic patterns to convey emotion or character, drawing upon auditory attention, memory, and accurate sound production, but not fine perceptual precision. We compared voice actors and a group of non-actors matched in musical training and assessed their neural encoding of pitch using the frequency-following response (FFR), as well as prosody, music, and sound perception. We find that the consistency of neural sound encoding, prosody perception, and musical phrase perception are enhanced in voice actors, suggesting that a range of neural and behavioural auditory processing enhancements can result from training which lacks fine perceptual precision. However, they didn’t show advantage in fine sound discrimination, which was instead linked to musical experience, suggesting that low-level auditory processing can only be enhanced by demanding perceptual training. These findings suggest that training which taxes attention, memory, and production but is not perceptually taxing may be a way to boost neural encoding of sound and auditory pattern detection in individuals with poor auditory skills.

Citation: Kachlicka, M., & Tierney, A. T. (2024). Voice actors show enhanced neural tracking of pitch, prosody perception, and music perception. Cortex, 178, 213-222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2024.06.016 

New preprint! 📣

4 February 2025

The brain’s navigation system also maps sound

Our brains have an internal GPS that guides us through physical space. But does it do more than that? When participants imagined changes in sound, like a pitch rising or falling, or a note getting longer or shorter, their brains showed grid-like activity in the entorhinal cortex, the same neural pattern used for physical navigation. A second experiment showed that when spatial thinking was disrupted, people struggled to mentally navigate sound, indicating that the brain’s navigation system isn’t just involved—it’s essential for this process. This supports the idea that the brain doesn’t solely map physical locations but also structures abstract knowledge in a similar way. Our findings take this a step further, revealing that spatial neural resources are not just engaged but necessary for this kind of mental organization.

Citation:  Jasmin, K., Bullock, M., Dick, F., Atkins, R., Bottini, R., Sigismondi, F., & Tierney, A. (2025). Spatial coding supports auditory conceptual navigation. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.02.04.636440 

New paper! ⏰

1 October 2024

What factors determine the importance placed on different sources of evidence during speech and music perception?

In this paper, we investigated how prior experience influences salience and attention to acoustic dimensions in speech and music. Mandarin speakers outperformed English speakers in attending to pitch and placed more weight on pitch when categorizing speech and music. Musical experience moderated these effects, enhancing attention to duration in Mandarin musicians. Contrary to predictions, first language did not affect cortical tracking, but Mandarin speakers showed enhanced early pitch encoding. These findings suggest that tone language experience does not increase the tendency for pitch to capture attention, regardless of task. Instead, tone language speakers may better direct attention to pitch when it is task-relevant, without affecting pitch salience.

Citation: Kachlicka, M., Symons, A. E., Saito, K., Dick, F., & Tierney, A. T. (2024). Tone langauge experience enhances dimension-selective attention and subcortical encoding but not cortical entrainment to pitch. Imaging Neuroscience, 2, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1162/imag_a_00297 

New paper! ⏰

1 June 2024

Phrase-specific learning and long-term memory contribute to the perception of speech-to-song illusion

Does phrase-specific knowledge play a role in perceiving musicality in speech? Can that knowledge be consolidated in long-term memory and influence the perceived phrase musicality? Recent paper by Kubit, Deng, Tierney and Margulis examined whether phrase-specific learning and long-term memory influence the perception of speech-to-song illusion. In Experiment 1, participants rated musicality of repeated phrases that were presented either consecutively or interleaved within blocks. In Experiment 2, they first rated musicality of consecutive repetitions of 8 phrases, and one week after they rated the same phrases and 8 new ones. Results showed an overall increase in musicality ratings across repetitions in all conditions. Stronger increase in consecutive stimuli compared to interleaved presentation and more-song like ratings of familiar phrases compared to novel ones provide evidence for the role of rapid stimulus-specific learning and memory in speech-to-song illusion.  

Citation: Kubit, B. M., Deng, C., Tierney, A. T., & Margulis, E. H. (2024). Rapid learning and long-term memory in the speech-to-song illusion. Music Perception, 41(5), 348-359. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2024.41.5.348  

New paper! ⏰

15 May 2024

Signatures of speech and songs reveal universal regularities despite cultural diversity

This study explored cross-cultural similarities and differences between speech and vocal music. Authors compared speech and music across six acoustic featuresthat were previously shown to be good descriptors of differences and similarities between these domains: pitch height, temporal rate, pitch stability, timbral brightness, pitch interval size and pitch declination. Seven additional features comprising rhythmic regularity, phrase length, pitch interval regularity, pitch range, intensity, pulse clarity and timbral noisiness were added for exploratory analysis. 75 co-authors from 55 different language backgrounds contributed self-recorded recordings of traditional songs, recited lyrics, speech and instrumental music. When comparing speech vs songs across datasets, songs had higher and more stable pitch, and slower temporal rate, while pitch interval sizes and timbral brightness were similar across domains. Many features in the exploratory analyses of recited lyrics and instrumental music varied along the musi-linguistic continuum, with instrumental music and spoken conversations representing the extremes of that continuum (e.g., most/least stable pitches respectively) and song and lyric recitation occupying intermediate positions. Overall, results from this study support the idea of cross-cultural regularities in speech and song.

Citation: Ozaki, Y., Tierney, A. T., et al. (2024). Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A registered report. Science Advances, 10, eadm9797. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adm9797 

Check also Daniela's take on this in her commentary: Sammler, D. (2024). Signatures of speech and song: "Universal" links despite cultural diversity. Science Advances, 10, eadp9620. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adp9620 

New paper! ⏰

6 March 2024

Our paper investigating the importance of various acoustic cues in categorization of speech vs song finally published!

Citation: Kachlicka, M., Patel, A. D., Liu, F. & Tierney, A. T. (2024). Weighting of cues to categorization of sound versus speech in tone-language and non-tone-langauge speakers. Cognition, 245, 105757. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105757 

New preprint! 📣

22 February 2023

Which statistics does the brain track while monitoring the rapid progression of sensory information?

Across several experiments, participants passively listened to tone sequences containing transitions between a range of stochastic patterns but lacking transient deviants - distributional changes could only be inferred by tracking the unfolding sequence statistics. Predictions were guided by a Bayesian predictive inference model that monitored hidden changes in the sequences’ statistical structure for change probability (likelihood of statistical change) and precision (inferred reliability of past inputs). Results show that listeners automatically track the statistics of unfolding sounds even when these are irrelevant to behaviour. Transitions between sequence patterns drove an increase of the sustained EEG response. This was observed to a range of distributional statistics, and even in situations where behavioural detection of these transitions was at floor. These observations suggest that the modulation of the EEG sustained response reflects a universal process of belief updating within the brain. By linking computational modelling with the brain responses, authors demonstrate that the dynamics of these transition-related responses align with the tracking of ‘precision’ – the confidence or reliability assigned to a predicted sensory signal.

Citation: Zhao, S., Skerritt-Davis, B., Elhilali, M., Dick, F., & Chait, M. (2024). Sustained EEG responses to rapidly unfolding stochastic sounds reflect precision tracking. https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.01.08.574691

New paper! ⏰

9 February 2024

Auditory processing as a multidimensional phenomenon encompassing auditory acuity, attention to acoustic details, and auditory-motor integration

The interaction view posits that auditory processing encompasses not only the perception of acoustic details (acuity), but also the direction of attention towards specific acoustical details and the transformation of auditory information into motor output (integration). To test this hypothesis, we examined whether a model incorporating all the components (acuity, attention, and integration) could account for additional variance in phonological and morphosyntactic aspects of language learning outcomes among Chinese learners of English. Results show that the tests scores tapped into distinct components of auditory processing (acuity, attention, and integration), and played an equal role in explaining various aspects of L2 learning, even after controlling for biographical background and working memory. Our findings align with the growing evidence suggesting that auditory processing, which includes perceptual, cognitive, and motoric components, plays a pivotal role in language learning throughout the lifespan. Read the paper for more details!

Citation: Saito, K., Kachlicka, M., Suzukida, Y., Mora-Plaza, I., Ruan, Y. & Tierney, A. T. (2024). Auditory processing as perceptual, cognitive, and motoric abilities underlying successful second language acquisition: Interaction model. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 50(1), 119-138. https://doi.org/10.1037/xhp0001166 

New paper! ⏰

31 January 2024

Is listening performance bound to the specific characteristics of musical instrument training or other types of auditory expertise?

This paper introduces a new population of auditory experts and compares their performance on a range of listening tasks with that of musicians and controls. Results show that audio engineers and performing musicians had lower psychophysical thresholds than controls, particularly in pitch perception. Audio engineers could also better memorise and recall non-musical auditory scenes, whereas musicians performed best in a sustained selective attention task. Finally, in a diotic speech-in-babble task, musicians showed lower signal-to-noise-ratio thresholds than the other two groups, but an online follow-up study failed to replicate this musician advantage. Overall, this study shows that investigating a wider range of forms of auditory expertise can help us corroborate (or challenge) the specificity of the advantages previously associated solely with musical instrument training.

Citation: Caprini, F., Zhao, S., Chait., M., Angus, T., Pomper, U., Dick, F., & Tierney, A. T. (2024). Generalization of auditory expertise in audio engineers and instrumental musicians. Cognition, 105696. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2023.105696

New preprint! 📣

16 January 2023

Can experience with the statistical regularities of speech and music increase the salience of informative dimensions within a given domain?

Across three experiments, listeners heard speech and tone streams varying in pitch and duration at fixed rhythms and either selectively attended to variations in pitch or duration or listened to these sequences without directing attention to either dimension. Listeners showed better dimension-selective attention to pitch and enhanced pitch tracking for tone compared to speech sequences. The opposite pattern was observed for the temporal dimension - better attention and enhanced duration tracking for speech. Individual differences in attention to pitch vs duration were stable across domains for stimuli with acoustically-matched stimuli. The same was true for the relative salience of pitch vs duration, but only for participants without percussion training. So the short answer is - yes! These findings suggest that long-term prior experience with the statistical regularities within a domain can enhance the salience of informative acoustic dimensions. Check out the preprint for more details!

Citation: Symons, A. E., Kachlicka, M., Wright, E., Razin, R., Dick, F., & Tierney, A. T. (2024). Dimensional salience varies across verbal and nonverbal domains. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/d4u93 

Dr Ashley Symons awarded funding from Sempre 💰

11 January 2024

Ashley was awarded the Arnold Bentley New Initiatives Fund by the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (Sempre) for a project investigating musical cue weighting in adolescence. Congratulations!

New paper! ⏰

23 December 2023

In their newest paper, Katya Petrova, Kyle Jasmin, Kazuya Saito and Adam Tierney examined how length of residence in a L2 environment modifies perceptual strategies for suprasegmental categorization. 

They showed that while categorizing phrase boundaries, Mandarin Chinese learners of English who lived in the UK for more than 3 years weighted duration more highly than Mandarin speakers with less than 1 year of experience living abroad. However, both groups of learners continued to weight duration less highly and pitch more highly during musical beat categorization and struggled to ignore pitch and selectively attend to amplitude in speech, relative to native English speakers. These results suggest that adult L2 experience can retune perceptual strategies in specific contexts, but global acoustic salience might be more resistant to change.

Citation: Petrova, K., Jasmin, K., Saito, K., & Tierney, A. T. (2023). Extensive residence in a second language environment modifies perceptual strategies for suprasegmental categorization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, 49(12), 1943-1955. https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0001246 

Posters from the SNL2023 meeting

4 December 2023

Did you miss our poster presentations at this year's Society for the Neurobiology of Language Meeting in Marseille? Here they are!

"Dimensional modulation in continuous speech captures attention" presented by Dr Ashley Symons

She found that salient changes in roughness, loudness, and pitch led to a transient increase in tapping speed between 250-750 ms after distracting sound changes. Individual differences in the magnitude of the tapping shift were also highly reliable across participants. A similar effect occurred when continuous speech was presented in the background - listeners’ tapping speeded up 500-1000 ms following salient amplitude, pitch, and spectral changes. These findings show that changes along acoustic dimensions in speech can capture attention and disrupt ongoing goal-directed behaviour. One potential mechanism of this could be the arousal driven by activity in the locus coeruleus, leading to an expansion of time perception.

Citation: Symons, A. E., Dick, F., & Tierney, A. T. (2023). Dimensional modulation in continuous speech captures attention. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.14173.38883 

"Effects of first language background and musical experience on cue weighting, attention and dimensional salience in speech and music" presented by Magdalena Kachlicka

Mandarin speakers, compared to native English speakers, showed enhanced attention to and preferential use of pitch across behavioural tasks - they gave more weight to pitch during prosody and musical beats categorisation and demonstrated superior attention to pitch. She found no effect of L1 background on neural entrainment to acoustic dimensions, but the FFR to stimulus pitch was enhanced in Mandarin speakers, suggesting that speaking a tone language can boost processing of early pitch encoding, without affecting pitch salience. Comparison of cue weighting strategies between musicians and non-musicians revealed that musical training sharpens tuning to the dimension most relevant to a given categorization task. These results are consistent with attention-to-dimension theories of cue weighting claiming that listeners redirect their attention toward the most informative or task-relevant cues.

Citation: Kachlicka, M., Symons, A. E., Saito, K., Dick, F., & Tierney, A. T. (2023). Effects of language background and musical experience on cue weighting, attention and dimensional salience in speech and music. http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.28291.48165 

ICN Seminar Series with Dr Kyle Jasmin - Monday 27/11

24 November 2023

Kyle, a former lab member and collaborator, will talk about his research into understanding neurocognitive and perceptual diversity in communication. You can find out more about his recent work here: https://www.kylejasm.in/ 

Date & time: 27 November (Monday), 3:15 - 4:15 pm (UK)

Location: ICN UCL, Alexandra House, RMB10

For more details on the seminar series see: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/icn/seminars 

Speech Science Forum with Prof Adam Tierney - Thursday 16/11

15 November 2023

Adam will talk about how perception of ambiguous sounds reveals the diversity of human perception

Abstract: One assumption driving research on human perception is that different people solve the underlying computational problems in the same way. According to this assumption, the world supplies a set of constraints and statistical regularities to which humans adapt, and although some people might be better than others at detecting these patterns, the optimal strategy does not differ across individuals. This assumption, however, may not always hold. For example, for a listener who has difficulty processing a particular dimension the optimal strategy may be to direct attention away from it and towards other stimulus features. One way to test this assumption is to present people with ambiguous stimuli that can be categorized in multiple ways to see whether individuals differ in how they are perceived. In this talk I will present evidence suggesting that categorization of ambiguous sounds varies across individuals, and that these different strategies reflect an individual’s perceptual strengths and weaknesses and their history of exposure to and use of sound.

Date & time: 16 November (Thursday), 4:00 - 5:00 pm (UK)

For more details on how to join see: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/events/2023/nov/speech-science-forum-adam-tierney 

New preprint! 📣

13 November 2023

Have you ever wondered about what acoustic cues people use while distinguishing between speech and song? Are there any cultural differences in how we make these decisions? Check our new preprint for some answers!

We find that listeners from different backgrounds agree on which phrases sound like song after repetition and that the strength of this effect does not depend on people's country of residence or language background. We also show that people rely on similar cues to distinguish between speech and song - all listeners used small pitch intervals, within-syllable pitch contours, steady beats, and fit to musical key. However, only tonal language speakers used pairwise syllabic durational variability as a cue, where more variable speech was perceived as more song-like. Overall, our findings seem to support the idea that how we perceive music is influenced by both our biological predispositions and our cultural background.

Citation: Kachlicka, M., Patel, A. D., Liu, F., & Tierney, A. (2023). Weighting of cues to categorization of song versus speech in tone language and non-tone-language speakers. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dwfsz

Introducing SLA Speech Tools!

03 March 2023

We are excited to introduce the SLA Speech Tools website! Members of the Auditory Neuroscience Lab have created a new resource for second language acquisition researchers and educators. Here researchers will find a wide range of validated measures for assessing individual differences in second language learning. Educators will find the latest research-based pronunciation teaching materials that are ready to be used in the classroom. Visit the website to find out more! 

Website: http://sla-speech-tools.com/ 

Citation: Mora-Plaza, I., Saito, K., Suzukida, Y., Dewaele, J-M., & Tierney, A. (2022). Tools for second language speech research and teaching. http://sla-speech-tools.com. http://doi.org/10.17616/R31NJNAX