Alexis K. Black will give a research seminar.
Title: Decoding words: using brain and behaviour to understand how we perceive and learn about chunks of sound
Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss two lines of research in my lab that aim to understand how we perceive and learn about words. In the first half, I will focus on how adult listeners perceive known words and novel word forms. Using machine-learning based classifiers, we demonstrate classic word competition dynamics in raw EEG signals. This neural decoding approach to neuroimaging data may yield robust measures of individual differences in perception (and learning); I will discuss our preliminary work exploring this aim, as well as current limitations and pitfalls. In the second part of the talk I turn to word learning. Recent replication failures and meta-analytic results suggest that classic language acquisition phenomena are less stable than expected. I will discuss our ongoing work that attempts to clarify these findings.
