Auditory Perceptual Learning

Question 1

Conscious Learning

Answer 1

Explicit, Declarative, facts and events

Question 2

Non-concious Learning

Answer 2

Implicit, non-declarative, skills

Question 3

One form of skill learning - perceptual learning

Answer 3

training induced improvements in the ability to perform a perceptual task

• temporal interval discrimination
• as training goes on they do better
• you can get better at hearing if you practice

Question 4

Applications of Perceptual Learning

Answer 4

Practical: 
- rehabilitation 
- creating new expertise 
Theoretical: 
- Neural Processing **
- Learning Mechanisms 

• this is easy to examine, you find something they have never done, teach them to do it and see how they learn

Question 5

Learning on Duration Discrimination - Neural Processing

Answer 5

• 2 tones, which are farther apart in time,
• they start at being able to tell apart a 120 ms gap, they work up to being able to tell 110 or 100 ms gap with training
• you can push the system, sensory system not necessarily fixed
• highly significant improvement

Question 6

Generalization - Neural Processing

Answer 6

learning this here, are you also learning to get better at something else?

• we train you on one task and then test you on another
• they did show same improvements for telling the same time difference with different frequencies - but not same frequency with different durations, -> they were only learning with duration
• not learning to discriminate overall duration - specific duration (they know what 100 ms is and how to tell that gap but not other gaps apart
• opposite of generalization is specificity
• different neurons care about duration than those frequency, time-atopic organization

Question 7

Learning Mechanisms

Answer 7

• perceptual learning typically requires performance of the task to be learned
• lack of cross-task transfer
• smaller or no physiological changes when stimulus exposures are not linked to task performance

Question 8

Task: frequency discrimination

Answer 8

• which of that pairs of tone pips has a lower frequency
• yielded learning on task after 10 days of training
• trained on interval discrimination - 10,000x and they still don’t know anything about frequency (trained in interval discrimination, tested on frequency discrimination, no generalization)
• top down influences that select and sensitize the neural processes to be modified
• Task performance - selection, sensitization - frequency

Question 9

For learning to accumulate over days requires a sufficient amount of training per day

Answer 9

• 0/day control group
• 360 trails per day isn’t enough to facilitate learning
• 900 trails a day did
• *6 day period for all
• THEN: 360 trials, 30 min break, 360 more trials, nope this doesn’t work either… you start again from 0 after the break, not from where you were, you have to reach the threshold of learning
• additional daily training beyond the required amount does not enhance learning

Question 10

Lasting learning requires

Answer 10

• selection
• sensitization
• sufficient stimulation of the sensitized neural processes, enough time spent doing it per day for training
• only amplified responses contribute to learning, sufficient amplified stimulation