Holt, L.
Carnegie Mellon University
A rich history of research with adults and infants informs us about the ways experience with the native language shapes speech perception. However, in part because it is so difficult to control and manipulate speech experience, we know very little about the learning mechanisms that are responsible. Moreover, there has been somewhat limited attention to how the auditory system solves complex learning challenges like those posed by speech signals. I will describe the results of a series of studies that exploit artificial, nonlinguistic sounds that mimic some of the complexities of speech to gain experimental control over listeners’ histories of experience and, ultimately, to leverage this control to work toward mechanistic explanations of auditory learning. We have exploited classic supervised categorization training techniques commonly employed in visual cognition as well as a more naturalistic videogame training paradigm that models multimodal regularities of the world without requiring overt categorization or providing explicit feedback. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of relating general auditory learning to better understand speech processing and indicate the ways in which auditory perception is jointly shaped by the acoustic signal, long-term learned representations, and regularities of the immediate environment. The literature in this area is not yet large, but already there are insights. We argue that progress in understanding speech processing can be made by understanding the boundaries and constraints of auditory cognition, in general. Reciprocally, our understanding of human auditory processing is deepened by studying the complex, experienced-dependent perceptual challenges presented by speech. Long relegated as a special system that could tell us little about general human cognition, the study of speech perception as a flexible, experience-dependent perceptual skill has much to offer the development of a mature auditory cognitive neuroscience.