Sensory Information Processing: Sensory-Cognitive Interactions

感觉信息处理：感觉认知交互

• 批准号: 9952-2013
• 负责人: Schneider, Bruce
• 金额: $ 3.42万
• 依托单位: University of Toronto
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2017-01-01 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=631169
• 关键词: Sensory; Information; Processing; Cognitive; Interactions

Imagine meeting a friend for lunch at a popular restaurant. Quite likely there is music playing in the background, as well as a babble of voiced coming from the people eating lunch at nearby tables. To make matters worse, the couple seated at the table next to you, whom you do not know, are discussing an event that took place at your daughter's school, and may have involved her. As a result, you find it very difficult to concentrate on what your friend is saying for two reasons. First, the shear volume of sound makes it difficult to hear your friend's voice. Second, neighboring conversations that are intelligible (you can actually make out what they are saying) interfere with your attempts to remain focused on what your friend is saying because bits and pieces of their conversations keep intruding into your consciousness. Hence, your ability to communicate in such situations will depend on how well your auditory system can extract your friend's voice from the volume of noise in the background, as well as your ability to ignore any bits of other people's conversation that are interfering with your concentration at a cognitive level. The goal of this grant is to understand how people manage to function in such environments. Previous research has shown that people who are listening in their second language find such situations much more difficult than those listening in their first language. This is a serious problem in Canada given the number of people for whom English or French is a second language. The research proposed here is aimed at finding out the reasons for this added difficulty with the eventual goal of ameliorating the difficulties that people who are functioning in their second language experience.

想象一下，在一家受欢迎的餐厅与朋友共进午餐。背景中很可能有音乐在播放，附近餐桌上吃午饭的人也发出了叽叽喳喳的声音。更糟糕的是，坐在你旁边的那对你不认识的夫妇正在讨论一件发生在你女儿学校的事情，可能涉及到她。因此，你会发现很难集中精力听你朋友在说什么，原因有两个。首先，声音的剪切量会让你很难听到朋友的声音。其次，听得懂的相邻对话(你实际上能听懂他们在说什么)会干扰你保持专注于你朋友所说的话的努力，因为他们的对话一直在零星地侵入你的意识。因此，你在这种情况下的沟通能力将取决于你的听觉系统从背景噪音中提取朋友声音的能力有多好，以及你在认知水平上忽视他人谈话中干扰你注意力的任何部分的能力。这笔赠款的目的是了解人们如何在这样的环境中发挥作用。之前的研究表明，用第二语言听的人比用第一语言听的人更难处理这种情况。鉴于很多人把英语或法语作为第二语言，这在加拿大是一个严重的问题。这项研究的目的是找出这种增加难度的原因，最终目的是改善使用第二语言的人所经历的困难。