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The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires blood-testing laboratories to perform licensed screening assays to ensure the safety of the volunteer blood supply. During the last 20 to 30 years there has been significant reductions in the risk of transfusion transmissible infectious diseases.The improvement in blood safety is a result of manufacturers' enhancements in assay screening kits and the implementation of nucleic acid testing. Blood screening assay technologies are robust with a high degree of sensitivity and specificity to correctly identify potentially infectious units. Confirmatory or supplemental tests are used to evaluate positive screening test results and assist in appropriate donor counseling.This 2 level approach ensures that potentially infectious units are discarded and that the blood donor is counseled and deferred appropriately. As new and emerging diseases are recognized it becomes the responsibility of the assay manufacturers, blood screening laboratories, accrediting agencies, and the FDA to develop and evaluate new screening tests and when deemed appropriate, require implementation to ensure the safest blood supply possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While cognitive theory has advanced several candidate frameworks to explain attentional entrainment, the neural basis for the temporal allocation of attention is unknown. Here we present a new model of attentional entrainment guided by empirical evidence obtained using a cohort of 50 artificial brains. These brains were evolved in silico to perform a duration judgment task similar to one where human subjects perform duration judgments in auditory oddball paradigms. We found that the artificial brains display psychometric characteristics remarkably similar to those of human listeners and exhibit similar patterns of distortions of perception when presented with out-of-rhythm oddballs. A detailed analysis of mechanisms behind the duration distortion suggests that attention peaks at the end of the tone, which is inconsistent with previous attentional entrainment models. Instead, the new model of entrainment emphasizes increased attention to those aspects of the stimulus that the brain expects to be highly informative., (© 2024 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

Developmental Coordination Disorder (DCD) is a common neurodevelopmental disorder featuring deficits in motor coordination and motor timing among children. Deficits in rhythmic tracking, including perceptually tracking and synchronizing action with auditory rhythms, have been studied in a wide range of motor disorders, providing a foundation for developing rehabilitation programs incorporating auditory rhythms. We tested whether DCD also features these auditory-motor deficits among 7-10 year-old children. In a speech recognition task with no overt motor component, modulating the speech rhythm interfered more with the performance of children at risk for DCD than typically developing (TD) children. A set of auditory-motor tapping tasks further showed that, although children at risk for DCD performed worse than TD children in general, the presence of an auditory rhythmic cue (isochronous metronome or music) facilitated the temporal consistency of tapping. Finally, accuracy in the recognition of rhythmically modulated speech and tapping consistency correlated with performance on the standardized motor assessment. Together, the results show auditory rhythmic regularity benefits auditory perception and auditory-motor coordination in children at risk for DCD. This provides a foundation for future clinical studies to develop evidence-based interventions involving auditory-motor rhythmic coordination for children with DCD., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

This study examined the relation between movement amplitude and tempo during self-paced rhythmic finger tapping to test a preferred velocity account of the preferred tempo construct. Preferred tempo refers to the concept that individuals have preferences for the pace of actions or events in their environment (e.g., the desired pace of walking or tempo of music). The preferred velocity hypothesis proposes that assessments of preferred tempo do not represent a pure time preference independent of spatial movement characteristics, but rather reflects a preference for an average movement velocity, predicting that preferred tempo will depend on movement amplitude. We tested this by having participants first perform a novel spontaneous motor amplitude (SMA) task in which they repetitively tapped their finger at their preferred amplitude without instructions about tapping tempo. Next, participants completed the spontaneous motor tempo (SMT) task in which they tapped their finger at their preferred tempo without instructions about tapping amplitude. Finally, participants completed a target amplitude version of the SMT task where they tapped at their preferred tempo at three target amplitudes (low, medium, and high). Participants (1) produced similar amplitudes and tempi regardless of instructions to produce either their preferred amplitude or preferred tempo, maintaining the same average movement velocity across SMA and SMT tasks and (2) altered their preferred tempo for different target amplitudes in the direction predicted by their estimated preferred velocity from the SMA and SMT tasks. Overall, results show the interdependence of movement amplitude and tempo in tapping assessments of preferred tempo., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Previous work by McAuley et al. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82, 3222-3233, (2020), Attention, Perception & Psychophysics, 83, 2229-2240, (2021) showed that disruption of the natural rhythm of target (attended) speech worsens speech recognition in the presence of competing background speech or noise (a target-rhythm effect), while disruption of background speech rhythm improves target recognition (a background-rhythm effect). While these results were interpreted as support for the role of rhythmic regularities in facilitating target-speech recognition amidst competing backgrounds (in line with a selective entrainment hypothesis), questions remain about the factors that contribute to the target-rhythm effect. Experiment 1 ruled out the possibility that the target-rhythm effect relies on a decrease in intelligibility of the rhythm-altered keywords. Sentences from the Coordinate Response Measure (CRM) paradigm were presented with a background of speech-shaped noise, and the rhythm of the initial portion of these target sentences (the target rhythmic context) was altered while critically leaving the target Color and Number keywords intact. Results showed a target-rhythm effect, evidenced by poorer keyword recognition when the target rhythmic context was altered, despite the absence of rhythmic manipulation of the keywords. Experiment 2 examined the influence of the relative onset asynchrony between target and background keywords. Results showed a significant target-rhythm effect that was independent of the effect of target-background keyword onset asynchrony. Experiment 3 provided additional support for the selective entrainment hypothesis by replicating the target-rhythm effect with a set of speech materials that were less rhythmically constrained than the CRM sentences., (© 2023. The Psychonomic Society, Inc.)

Understanding continuous speech with competing background sounds is challenging, particularly for older adults. One stimulus property that may aid listeners understanding of to-be-attended (target) material is temporal regularity (rhythm). In the context of speech-in-noise understanding, McAuley and colleagues recently showed a target rhythm effect whereby recognition of target speech was better when natural speech rhythm of a target talker was intact than when it was temporally altered. The current study replicates the target rhythm effect using a synthetic vowel sequence paradigm in young adults (Experiment 1) and then uses this paradigm to investigate potential age-related changes in the effect of rhythm on recognition (Experiment 2). Listeners identified the last three vowels of temporally regular (isochronous) and irregular (anisochronous) synthetic vowel sequences in quiet and with a competing background sequence of vowel-like harmonic tone complexes presented at various tempos. The results replicated the target rhythm effect whereby temporal regularity in the vowel sequences improved identification accuracy of young listeners compared to irregular vowel sequences. The magnitude of the effect was not found to be influenced by background tempo, but faster background tempos led to greater vowel identification accuracy independent of regularity. Older listeners also demonstrated a target rhythm effect but received less benefit from the temporal regularity of the target sequences than did young listeners. This study highlights the importance of rhythm for understanding age-related differences in selective listening in complex environments and provides a novel paradigm for investigating effects of rhythm on perception., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Sensitivity to the temporal properties of auditory patterns tends to be poorer in older listeners, and this has been hypothesized to be one factor contributing to their poorer speech understanding. This study examined sensitivity to speech rhythms in young and older normal-hearing subjects, using a task designed to measure the effect of speech rhythmic context on the detection of changes in the timing of word onsets in spoken sentences. A temporal-shift detection paradigm was used in which listeners were presented with an intact sentence followed by two versions of the sentence in which a portion of speech was replaced with a silent gap: one with correct gap timing (the same duration as the missing speech) and one with altered gap timing (shorter or longer than the duration of the missing speech), resulting in an early or late resumption of the sentence after the gap. The sentences were presented with either an intact rhythm or an altered rhythm preceding the silent gap. Listeners judged which sentence had the altered gap timing, and thresholds for the detection of deviations from the correct timing were calculated separately for shortened and lengthened gaps. Both young and older listeners demonstrated lower thresholds in the intact rhythm condition than in the altered rhythm conditions. However, shortened gaps led to lower thresholds than lengthened gaps for the young listeners, while older listeners were not sensitive to the direction of the change in timing. These results show that both young and older listeners rely on speech rhythms to generate temporal expectancies for upcoming speech events. However, the absence of lower thresholds for shortened gaps among the older listeners indicates a change in speech-timing expectancies with age. A further examination of individual differences within the older group revealed that those with better rhythm-discrimination abilities (from a separate study) tended to show the same heightened sensitivity to early events observed with the young listeners., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Pearson, Shen, McAuley and Kidd.)

A growing number of studies have shown a connection between rhythmic processing and language skill. It has been proposed that domain-general rhythm abilities might help children to tap into the rhythm of speech (prosody), cueing them to prosodic markers of grammatical (syntactic) information during language acquisition, thus underlying the observed correlations between rhythm and language. Working memory processes common to task demands for musical rhythm discrimination and spoken language paradigms are another possible source of individual variance observed in musical rhythm and language abilities. To investigate the nature of the relationship between musical rhythm and expressive grammar skills, we adopted an individual differences approach in N = 132 elementary school-aged children ages 5-7, with typical language development, and investigated prosodic perception and working memory skills as possible mediators. Aligning with the literature, musical rhythm was correlated with expressive grammar performance (r = 0.41, p < 0.001). Moreover, musical rhythm predicted mastery of complex syntax items (r = 0.26, p = 0.003), suggesting a privileged role of hierarchical processing shared between musical rhythm processing and children's acquisition of complex syntactic structures. These relationships between rhythm and grammatical skills were not mediated by prosodic perception, working memory, or non-verbal IQ; instead, we uncovered a robust direct effect of musical rhythm perception on grammatical task performance. Future work should focus on possible biological endophenotypes and genetic influences underlying this relationship., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Children with developmental language disorder (DLD) show relative weaknesses on rhythm tasks beyond their characteristic linguistic impairments. The current study compares preferred tempo and the width of an entrainment region for 5- to 7-year-old typically developing (TD) children and children with DLD and considers the associations with rhythm aptitude and expressive grammar skills in the two populations. Preferred tempo was measured with a spontaneous motor tempo task (tapping tempo at a comfortable speed), and the width (range) of an entrainment region was measured by the difference between the upper (slow) and lower (fast) limits of tapping a rhythm normalized by an individual's spontaneous motor tempo. Data from N = 16 children with DLD and N = 114 TD children showed that whereas entrainment-region width did not differ across the two groups, slowest motor tempo, the determinant of the upper (slow) limit of the entrainment region, was at a faster tempo in children with DLD vs. TD. In other words, the DLD group could not pace their slow tapping as slowly as the TD group. Entrainment-region width was positively associated with rhythm aptitude and receptive grammar even after taking into account potential confounding factors, whereas expressive grammar did not show an association with any of the tapping measures. Preferred tempo was not associated with any study variables after including covariates in the analyses. These results motivate future neuroscientific studies of low-frequency neural oscillatory mechanisms as the potential neural correlates of entrainment-region width and their associations with musical rhythm and spoken language processing in children with typical and atypical language development., Competing Interests: Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Rhythm perception deficits have been linked to neurodevelopmental disorders affecting speech and language. Children who stutter have shown poorer rhythm discrimination and attenuated functional connectivity in rhythm-related brain areas, which may negatively impact timing control required for speech. It is unclear whether adults who stutter (AWS), who are likely to have acquired compensatory adaptations in response to rhythm processing/timing deficits, are similarly affected. We compared rhythm discrimination in AWS and controls (total n = 36) during fMRI in two matched conditions: simple rhythms that consistently reinforced a periodic beat, and complex rhythms that did not (requiring greater reliance on internal timing). Consistent with an internal beat deficit hypothesis, behavioral results showed poorer complex rhythm discrimination for AWS than controls. In AWS, greater stuttering severity was associated with poorer rhythm discrimination. AWS showed increased activity within beat-based timing regions and increased functional connectivity between putamen and cerebellum (supporting interval-based timing) for simple rhythms., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Recent work using music highlights how past experiences and the immediate perceptual environment can shape imagination. Given that aspects of past experiences can be shared, depending on culture, as can the immediate perceptual environment, imaginings that might appear idiosyncratic or entirely subjective can in fact be broadly shared., Competing Interests: Declaration of interests The authors have no interests to declare., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Moving in synchrony to the beat is a fundamental component of musicality. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study to identify common genetic variants associated with beat synchronization in 606,825 individuals. Beat synchronization exhibited a highly polygenic architecture, with 69 loci reaching genome-wide significance (P < 5 × 10 -8 ) and single-nucleotide-polymorphism-based heritability (on the liability scale) of 13%-16%. Heritability was enriched for genes expressed in brain tissues and for fetal and adult brain-specific gene regulatory elements, underscoring the role of central-nervous-system-expressed genes linked to the genetic basis of the trait. We performed validations of the self-report phenotype (through separate experiments) and of the genome-wide association study (polygenic scores for beat synchronization were associated with patients algorithmically classified as musicians in medical records of a separate biobank). Genetic correlations with breathing function, motor function, processing speed and chronotype suggest shared genetic architecture with beat synchronization and provide avenues for new phenotypic and genetic explorations., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

People readily imagine narratives in response to instrumental music. Although previous work has established that these narratives show broad intersubjectivity, it remains unclear whether these imagined stories are atemporal, or unfold systematically over the temporal extent of a musical excerpt. To investigate the dynamics of perceived musical narrative, we had participants first listen to 16 instrumental musical excerpts, which had previously been normed for factors of interest. While listening, participants continuously moved a slider to indicate their fluctuating perceptions of tension and relaxation. In a separate experimental session, participants reported the stories they imagined while listening to each excerpt, and then, while listening to the excerpts a final time, clicked a mouse to mark the time points at which they imagined new events in the ongoing imagined story. The time points of these event markings were not uniformly distributed throughout the excerpts, but were clustered at distinct moments, indicating that imagined narratives unfold in real time and entail general consensus about when listeners imagine events in the music. Moreover, the time points at which people tended to imagine events were correlated with the time points at which people tended to perceive salient changes in musical tension, as separately recorded within the first experimental session. The degree of alignment was greater for excerpts high in narrativity than those low in narrativity. Together, these results show that music can dynamically guide a listener's imagination and there is remarkable intersubjectivity in 'when' hear imagined story events in a piece of music., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The scientific literature sometimes considers music an abstract stimulus, devoid of explicit meaning, and at other times considers it a universal language. Here, individuals in three geographically distinct locations spanning two cultures performed a highly unconstrained task: they provided free-response descriptions of stories they imagined while listening to instrumental music. Tools from natural language processing revealed that listeners provide highly similar stories to the same musical excerpts when they share an underlying culture, but when they do not, the generated stories show limited overlap. These results paint a more complex picture of music's power: music can generate remarkably similar stories in listeners' minds, but the degree to which these imagined narratives are shared depends on the degree to which culture is shared across listeners. Thus, music is neither an abstract stimulus nor a universal language but has semantic affordances shaped by culture, requiring more sustained attention from psychology., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest., (Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)

Music has attracted longstanding debate surrounding its capacity to communicate without words, but little empirical work has addressed the topic. Here, 534 participants in the US and a remote region of China participated in two experiments using a novel paradigm to investigate narrative perceptions as a semantic dimension of music. Participants listened to wordless musical excerpts and determined which of two presented stories was the correct match. Correct matches were stories previously imagined by individuals from the US or China in response to each of the excerpts, while foils were correct matches to one of the other tested excerpts. Results revealed that listeners from Arkansas and Michigan had no difficulty matching the music with stories generated by Arkansas listeners. Wordless music, then, far from an abstract stimulus, seems to engender shared, concrete narrative perceptions in listeners. These perceptions are stable and robust for within-culture participants, even at geographically distinct locales (e.g. Arkansas and Michigan). This finding refutes the notion that music is an asemantic medium. In contrast, participants in both the US and China had more difficulty determining correct story-music matches for stories generated by participants from another culture, suggesting that a sufficiently shared pool of experiences must exist for strong intersubjectivity to arise., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Recent work by McAuley et al. (Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 82, 3222-3233, 2020) using the Coordinate Response Measure (CRM) paradigm with a multitalker background revealed that altering the natural rhythm of target speech amidst background speech worsens target recognition (a target-rhythm effect), while altering background speech rhythm improves target recognition (a background-rhythm effect). Here, we used a single-talker background to examine the role of specific properties of target and background sound patterns on selective listening without the complexity of multiple background stimuli. Experiment 1 manipulated the sex of the background talker, presented with a male target talker, to assess target and background-rhythm effects with and without a strong pitch cue to aid perceptual segregation. Experiment 2 used a vocoded single-talker background to examine target and background-rhythm effects with envelope-based speech rhythms preserved, but without semantic content or temporal fine structure. While a target-rhythm effect was present with all backgrounds, the background-rhythm effect was only observed for the same-sex background condition. Results provide additional support for a selective entrainment hypothesis, while also showing that the background-rhythm effect is not driven by envelope-based speech rhythm alone, and may be reduced or eliminated when pitch or other acoustic differences provide a strong basis for selective listening.

Common social behaviors, such as having a conversation, dancing, or playing a team sport, require precise interpersonal coordination of action. One question that emerges in research on interpersonal coordination is to what extent individuals implicitly mimic the spatial characteristics of movements for tasks that emphasize movement timing. To investigate this question, we conducted two experiments using an interpersonal synchronization-continuation tapping paradigm in which pairs of individuals tapped with their index finger on a table in synchrony with an auditory metronome and then continued tapping at the same tempo when the metronome stopped. Pairs of individuals tapped either together with the instruction to maintain synchrony with each other (interpersonal tapping) or tapped alone (solo tapping). Solo tapping conditions either occurred with their tapping partner present in the testing room (Experiment 1) or absent (Experiment 2). We used motion capture to examine both the spatial and temporal aspects of movement dynamics during task performance. In both experiments, participants implicitly mimicked subtle aspects of spatial elements of their partner's movements. The extent of finger extension (tap amplitude) and, in Experiment 1, duration of finger contact with the surface (dwell time) were correlated between tapping partners when they tapped together. In some cases, this spatial mimicry extended to solo tapping conditions, but only during solo tapping conditions that followed the interpersonal tapping task, and, to a lesser degree, when solo tapping after having observed the other participant solo tapping.

Three experiments investigated listeners' ability to use speech rhythm to attend selectively to a single target talker presented in multi-talker babble (Experiments 1 and 2) and in speech-shaped noise (Experiment 3). Participants listened to spoken sentences of the form "Ready [Call sign] go to [Color] [Number] now" and reported the Color and Number spoken by a target talker (cued by the Call sign "Baron"). Experiment 1 altered the natural rhythm of the target talker and background talkers for two-talker and six-talker backgrounds. Experiment 2 considered parametric rhythm alterations over a wider range, altering the rhythm of either the target or the background talkers. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that altering the rhythm of the target talker, while keeping the rhythm of the background intact, reduced listeners' ability to report the Color and Number spoken by the target talker. Conversely, altering the rhythm of the background talkers, while keeping the target rhythm intact, improved listeners ability to report the Color and Number spoken by the target talker. Experiment 3, which embedded the target talker in speech-shaped noise rather than multi-talker babble, similarly reduced recognition of the target sentence with increased alteration of the target rhythm. This pattern of results favors a dynamic-attending theory-based selective-entrainment hypothesis over a disparity-based segregation hypothesis and an increased salience hypothesis.

Unexpected oddball stimuli embedded within a series of otherwise identical standard stimuli tend to be overestimated in duration. The present study tested a pitch-window explanation of the auditory oddball effect on perceived duration in two experiments. For both experiments, participants listened to isochronous sequences consisting of a series of 400 Hz fixed-duration standard tones with an embedded oddball tone that differed in pitch and judged whether the variable-duration oddball was shorter or longer than the standard. Participants were randomly assigned to either a wide or narrow pitch-window condition, in which an anchor oddball was presented with high likelihood at either a far pitch (850 Hz) or a near pitch (550 Hz), respectively. In both pitch-window conditions, probe oddballs were presented with low likelihood at pitches that were either within or outside the frequency range established by the standard and anchor tones. Identical 700 Hz probe oddballs were perceived to be shorter in duration in the wide pitch-window condition than in the narrow pitch-window condition (Experiments 1 and 2), even when matching the overall frequency range of oddballs across conditions (Experiment 2). Results support the proposed pitch-window hypothesis, but are inconsistent with both enhanced processing and predictive coding accounts of the oddball effect.

Rhythm is an important aspect of both human speech and birdsong. Adult zebra finches show increased neural activity following exposure to arrhythmic compared to rhythmic song in regions similar to the mammalian auditory association cortex and amygdala. This pattern may indicate that birds are detecting errors in the arrhythmic song relative to their learned song template or to more general expectations of song structure. Here we exposed juvenile zebra finches to natural conspecific song (rhythmic) or song with altered inter-syllable intervals (arrhythmic) prior to or during template formation, or afterward as males are matching vocal production to a memorized song template (sensorimotor integration). Before template formation, expression of the immediate early gene ZENK was increased in the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM) of birds exposed to rhythmic relative to arrhythmic song. During template formation, ZENK expression was increased in the caudomedial mesopallium (CMM) of birds exposed to arrhythmic relative to rhythmic song. These results suggest that the youngest birds may be predisposed to respond to a more natural stimulus, and a template may be required for arrhythmic song to elicit increased neural activity. It also appears that functional development across the brain regions investigated continues to maturity., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Oestradiol is abundant in the zebra finch auditory forebrain and has the capacity to modulate neural responses to auditory stimuli with specificity as a result of both hemisphere and sex. Arrhythmic song induces greater ZENK expression than rhythmic song in the caudomedial nidopallium (NCM), caudomedial mesopallium (CMM) and nucleus taeniae (Tn) of adult zebra finches. The increases in the auditory regions (i.e. NCM and CMM) may result from detection of errors in the arrhythmic song relative to the learned template. In the present study, zebra finches were treated with oestradiol, the aromatase inhibitor fadrozole or a control and then exposed to rhythmic or arrhythmic song to assess the effect of oestradiol availability on neural responses to auditory rhythms. ZENK mRNA was significantly greater in the left hemisphere within the NCM, CMM and Tn. Main effects of sex were detected in both auditory regions, with increased ZENK in males in the NCM and in females in the CMM. In the CMM, an effect of hormone treatment also existed. Although no pairwise comparison was statistically significant, the pattern suggested greater ZENK expression in control compared to both fadrozole- and oestradiol-treated birds. In the NCM, an interaction between sex and hormone treatment suggested that the sex effect was restricted to control animals. An additional interaction in the NCM among sex, stimulus rhythmicity and hemisphere indicated that the strongest effect of laterality was present in males exposed to arrhythmic song. The hormone effects suggest that an optimal level of oestradiol may exist for processing rhythmicity of auditory stimuli. The overall pattern for left lateralisation parallels the left lateralisation of language processing in humans and may suggest that this hemisphere is specialised for processing conspecific vocalisations. The reversed sex differences in the NCM and CMM suggest that males and females differentially rely on components of the auditory forebrain for processing conspecific song., (© 2017 British Society for Neuroendocrinology.)

Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by frequent and involuntary disruptions during speech production. Adults who stutter are often subject to negative perceptions. The present study examined whether negative social and cognitive impressions are formed when listening to speech, even without any knowledge about the speaker. Two experiments were conducted in which naïve participants were asked to listen to and provide ratings on samples of read speech produced by adults who stutter and typically-speaking adults without knowledge about the individuals who produced the speech. In both experiments, listeners rated speaker cognitive ability, likeability, anxiety, as well as a number of speech characteristics that included fluency, naturalness, intelligibility, the likelihood the speaker had a speech-and-language disorder (Experiment 1 only), rate and volume (both Experiments 1 and 2). The speech of adults who stutter was perceived to be less fluent, natural, intelligible, and to be slower and louder than the speech of typical adults. Adults who stutter were also perceived to have lower cognitive ability, to be less likeable and to be more anxious than the typical adult speakers. Relations between speech characteristics and social and cognitive impressions were found, independent of whether or not the speaker stuttered (i.e., they were found for both adults who stutter and typically-speaking adults) and did not depend on being cued that some of the speakers may have had a speech-language impairment.

Historically known for its key contribution to motor behavior, the cerebellum continues to break boundaries. Researchers have demonstrated the cerebellum also plays a role in learning, memory, and more recent evidence for contributions in language, attention, working memory, emotions, and social processes. Here, we present a study that adds to the list of nonmotor processes of the cerebellum. We used images of faces and outdoor scenes to examine the cerebellar response to familiar and novel stimuli. Participants were familiarized with a subset of stimuli, and then underwent functional MRI (fMRI) where they were presented with the previously stimuli and new stimuli while making "old" and "new" judgment. In a familiar versus novel contrast, familiar stimuli (faces and scenes combined) activated bilateral regions of the cerebellum including I-IV, V, VI, Crus I, and Crus II. When separated by type, familiar faces had greater activation of bilateral I-IV than novel faces. These results demonstrate the cerebellar role in determining familiarity and contribute to continuing research supporting cerebellar contributions to nonmotor processes. (PsycINFO Database Record, ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Our ability to perceive and produce rhythmic patterns in the environment supports fundamental human capacities ranging from music and language processing to the coordination of action. This article considers whether spontaneous correlated brain activity within a basal ganglia-thalamocortical (rhythm) network is associated with individual differences in auditory rhythm discrimination. Moreover, do children who stutter with demonstrated deficits in rhythm perception have weaker links between rhythm network functional connectivity and rhythm discrimination? All children in the study underwent a resting-state fMRI session, from which functional connectivity measures within the rhythm network were extracted from spontaneous brain activity. In a separate session, the same children completed an auditory rhythm-discrimination task, where behavioral performance was assessed using signal detection analysis. We hypothesized that in typically developing children, rhythm network functional connectivity would be associated with behavioral performance on the rhythm discrimination task, but that this relationship would be attenuated in children who stutter. Results supported our hypotheses, lending strong support for the view that (1) children who stutter have weaker rhythm network connectivity and (2) the lack of a relation between rhythm network connectivity and rhythm discrimination in children who stutter may be an important contributing factor to the etiology of stuttering.

This study characterized cerebellar connectivity with executive intrinsic functional connectivity networks. Using seed regions at the right and left dorsolateral prefrontal cortices (dlPFC) and right orbital frontoinsula, we measured resting-state brain connectivity in healthy college-aged participants. Based on the previous research demonstrating a relationship between the cerebellum and self-report measures of behavioral inhibition, we assessed individual differences in connectivity between groups. Overall, intrinsic activity in cerebellar lobule VIII was significantly correlated with the executive network and cerebellar Crus I with the salience network. Between-group comparisons indicated stronger cerebellar connectivity with the executive network in behaviorally inhibited individuals. Intrinsic activity in Crus I, a region previously implicated in non-motor cerebellar functions, significantly correlated with intrinsic activity in the right dlPFC seed region. These findings support a growing number of studies demonstrating cerebellar influence on higher cognitive processes, extending this relationship to individual differences in anxiety vulnerability.

The present study used ERPs to test the extent to which temporal processing is modality specific or modality general. Participants were presented with auditory and visual temporal patterns that consisted of initial two- or three-event beginning patterns. This delineated a constant standard time interval, followed by a two-event ending pattern delineating a variable test interval. Participants judged whether they perceived the pattern as a whole to be speeding up or slowing down. The contingent negative variation (CNV), a negative potential reflecting temporal expectancy, showed a larger amplitude for the auditory modality compared to the visual modality but a high degree of similarity in scalp voltage patterns across modalities, suggesting that the CNV arises from modality-general processes. A late, memory-dependent positive component (P3) also showed similar patterns across modalities., (© 2015 Society for Psychophysiological Research.)

Do the same mechanisms underlie processing of music and language? Recent investigations of this question have yielded inconsistent results. Likely factors contributing to discrepant findings are use of small samples and failure to control for individual differences in cognitive ability. We investigated the relationship between music and speech prosody processing, while controlling for cognitive ability. Participants (n = 179) completed a battery of cognitive ability tests, the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA) to assess music perception, and a prosody test of pitch peak timing discrimination (early, as in insight vs. late, incite). Structural equation modeling revealed that only music perception was a significant predictor of prosody test performance. Music perception accounted for 34.5% of variance on prosody test performance; cognitive abilities and music training added only about 8%. These results indicate musical pitch and temporal processing are highly predictive of pitch discrimination in speech processing, even after controlling for other possible predictors of this aspect of language processing., ((c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).)

The distal prosodic patterning established at the beginning of an utterance has been shown to influence downstream word segmentation and lexical access. In this study, we investigated whether distal prosody also affects word learning in a novel (artificial) language. Listeners were exposed to syllable sequences in which the embedded words were either congruent or incongruent with the distal prosody of a carrier phrase. Local segmentation cues, including the transitional probabilities between syllables, were held constant. During a test phase, listeners rated the items as either words or nonwords. Consistent with the perceptual grouping of syllables being predicted by distal prosody, congruent items were more likely to be judged as words than were incongruent items. The results provide the first evidence that perceptual grouping affects word learning in an unknown language, demonstrating that distal prosodic effects may be independent of lexical or other language-specific knowledge.

Stuttering is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects the timing and rhythmic flow of speech production. When speech is synchronized with an external rhythmic pacing signal (e.g., a metronome), even severe stuttering can be markedly alleviated, suggesting that people who stutter may have difficulty generating an internal rhythm to pace their speech. To investigate this possibility, children who stutter and typically-developing children (n=17 per group, aged 6-11 years) were compared in terms of their auditory rhythm discrimination abilities of simple and complex rhythms. Children who stutter showed worse rhythm discrimination than typically-developing children. These findings provide the first evidence of impaired rhythm perception in children who stutter, supporting the conclusion that developmental stuttering may be associated with a deficit in rhythm processing., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Stimulus-specific adaptation is the phenomenon whereby neural response magnitude decreases with repeated stimulation. Inconsistencies between recent nonhuman animal recordings and computational modeling suggest dynamic influences on stimulus-specific adaptation. The present human electroencephalography (EEG) study investigates the potential role of statistical context in dynamically modulating stimulus-specific adaptation by examining the auditory cortex-generated N1 and P2 components. As in previous studies of stimulus-specific adaptation, listeners were presented with oddball sequences in which the presentation of a repeated tone was infrequently interrupted by rare spectral changes taking on three different magnitudes. Critically, the statistical context varied with respect to the probability of small versus large spectral changes within oddball sequences (half of the time a small change was most probable; in the other half a large change was most probable). We observed larger N1 and P2 amplitudes (i.e., release from adaptation) for all spectral changes in the small-change compared with the large-change statistical context. The increase in response magnitude also held for responses to tones presented with high probability, indicating that statistical adaptation can overrule stimulus probability per se in its influence on neural responses. Computational modeling showed that the degree of coadaptation in auditory cortex changed depending on the statistical context, which in turn affected stimulus-specific adaptation. Thus the present data demonstrate that stimulus-specific adaptation in human auditory cortex critically depends on statistical context. Finally, the present results challenge the implicit assumption of stationarity of neural response magnitudes that governs the practice of isolating established deviant-detection responses such as the mismatch negativity., (Copyright © 2015 the American Physiological Society.)

Purpose: A large body of literature has indicated vowel space area expansion in infant-directed (ID) speech compared with adult-directed (AD) speech, which may promote language acquisition. The current study tested whether this expansion occurs in storybook speech read to infants at various points during their first 2 years of life., Method: In 2 studies, mothers read a storybook containing target vowels in ID and AD speech conditions. Study 1 was longitudinal, with 11 mothers recorded when their infants were 3, 6, and 9 months old. Study 2 was cross-sectional, with 48 mothers recorded when their infants were 3, 9, 13, or 20 months old (n=12 per group). The 1st and 2nd formants of vowels /i/, /ɑ/, and /u/ were measured, and vowel space area and dispersion were calculated., Results: Across both studies, 1st and/or 2nd formant frequencies shifted systematically for /i/ and /u/ vowels in ID compared with AD speech. No difference in vowel space area or dispersion was found., Conclusions: The results suggest that a variety of communication and situational factors may affect phonetic modifications in ID speech, but that vowel space characteristics in speech to infants stay consistent across the first 2 years of life.

This paper reviews the mounting evidence for shared cognitive mechanisms and neural resources for rhythm and grammar. Evidence for a role of rhythm skills in language development and language comprehension is reviewed here in three lines of research: (1) behavioral and brain data from adults and children, showing that prosody and other aspects of timing of sentences influence online morpho-syntactic processing; (2) comorbidity of impaired rhythm with grammatical deficits in children with language impairment; and (3) our recent work showing a strong positive association between rhythm perception skills and expressive grammatical skills in young school-age children with typical development. Our preliminary follow-up study presented here revealed that musical rhythm perception predicted variance in 6-year-old children's production of complex syntax, as well as online reorganization of grammatical information (transformation); these data provide an additional perspective on the hierarchical relations potentially shared by rhythm and grammar. A theoretical framework for shared cognitive resources for the role of rhythm in perceiving and learning grammatical structure is elaborated on in light of potential implications for using rhythm-emphasized musical training to improve language skills in children., (© 2015 New York Academy of Sciences.)

This study considered the contribution of dynamic attending theory (DAT) and attentional entrainment to systematic distortions in perceived event duration. Three experiments were conducted using an auditory oddball paradigm, in which listeners judged the duration of a deviant (oddball) stimulus embedded within a series of identical (standard) stimuli. To test for a role of attentional entrainment in perceived oddball duration, oddballs were presented at either temporally expected (on time) or unexpectedly early or late time points relative to extrapolation of the context rhythm. Consistent with involvement of attentional entrainment in perceived duration, duration judgements about the oddball were least distorted when the oddball occurred on time with respect to the entrained rhythm, whereas durations of early and late oddballs were perceived to be shorter and longer, respectively. This pattern of results was independent of the absolute time interval preceding the oddball. Moreover, as expected, an irregularly timed sequence context weakened observed differences between oddballs with on-time and late onsets. Combined with other recent work on the role of temporal preparation in duration distortions, the present findings allot at least a portion of the oddball effect to increased attention to events that are more expected, rather than on their unexpected nature per se., (© 2014 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved.)

Rhythm is important in the production of motor sequences such as speech and song. Deficits in rhythm processing have been implicated in human disorders that affect speech and language processing, including stuttering, autism, and dyslexia. Songbirds provide a tractable model for studying the neural underpinnings of rhythm processing due to parallels with humans in neural structures and vocal learning patterns. In this study, adult zebra finches were exposed to naturally rhythmic conspecific song or arrhythmic song. Immunohistochemistry for the immediate early gene ZENK was used to detect neural activation in response to these two types of stimuli. ZENK was increased in response to arrhythmic song in the auditory association cortex homologs, caudomedial nidopallium (NCM) and caudomedial mesopallium (CMM), and the avian amygdala, nucleus taeniae (Tn). CMM also had greater ZENK labeling in females than males. The increased neural activity in NCM and CMM during perception of arrhythmic stimuli parallels increased activity in the human auditory cortex following exposure to unexpected, or perturbed, auditory stimuli. These auditory areas may be detecting errors in arrhythmic song when comparing it to a stored template of how conspecific song is expected to sound. CMM may also be important for females in evaluating songs of potential mates. In the context of other research in songbirds, we suggest that the increased activity in Tn may be related to the value of song for assessing mate choice and bonding or it may be related to perception of arrhythmic song as aversive.

Humans unconsciously track a wide array of distributional characteristics in their sensory environment. Recent research in spoken-language processing has demonstrated that the speech rate surrounding a target region within an utterance influences which words, and how many words, listeners hear later in that utterance. On the basis of hypotheses that listeners track timing information in speech over long timescales, we investigated the possibility that the perception of words is sensitive to speech rate over such a timescale (e.g., an extended conversation). Results demonstrated that listeners tracked variation in the overall pace of speech over an extended duration (analogous to that of a conversation that listeners might have outside the lab) and that this global speech rate influenced which words listeners reported hearing. The effects of speech rate became stronger over time. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that neural entrainment by speech occurs on multiple timescales, some lasting more than an hour., (© The Author(s) 2014.)

Due to extensive variability in the phonetic realizations of words, there may be few or no proximal spectro-temporal cues that identify a word's onset or even its presence. Dilley and Pitt (2010) showed that the rate of context speech, distal from a to-be-recognized word, can have a sizeable effect on whether or not a word is perceived. This investigation considered whether there is a distinct role for distal rhythm in the disappearing word effect. Listeners heard sentences that had a grammatical interpretation with or without a critical function word (FW) and transcribed what they heard (e.g., are in Jill got quite mad when she heard there are birds can be removed and Jill got quite mad when she heard their birds is still grammatical). Consistent with a perceptual grouping hypothesis, participants were more likely to report critical FWs when distal rhythm (repeating ternary or binary pitch patterns) matched the rhythm in the FW-containing region than when it did not. Notably, effects of distal rhythm and distal rate were additive. Results demonstrate a novel effect of distal rhythm on the amount of lexical material listeners hear, highlighting the importance of distal timing information and providing new constraints for models of spoken word recognition., (Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Prosodic context several syllables prior (i.e., distal) to an ambiguous word boundary influences speech segmentation. To assess whether distal prosody influences early perceptual processing or later lexical competition, EEG was recorded while subjects listened to eight-syllable sequences with ambiguous word boundaries for the last four syllables (e.g., tie murder bee vs. timer derby ). Pitch and duration of the first 5 syllables were manipulated to induce sequence segmentation with either a monosyllabic or disyllabic final word. Behavioral results confirmed a successful manipulation. Moreover, penultimate syllables (e.g., der ) elicited a larger anterior positivity 200-500 ms after onset for prosodic contexts predicted to induce word-initial perception of these syllables. Final syllables (e.g. bee ) elicited a similar anterior positivity in the context predicted to induce word-initial perception of these syllables. Additionally, these final syllables elicited a larger positive-to-negative deflection (P1-N1) 60-120 ms after onset, and a larger N400. The finding that prosodic characteristics of speech several syllables prior to ambiguous word boundaries modulate both early and late ERPs elicited by subsequent syllable onsets provides evidence that distal prosody influences early perceptual processing, and later lexical competition.

Pronunciation variation is under-studied in infant-directed speech, particularly for consonants. Regressive place assimilation involves a word-final alveolar stop taking the place of articulation of a following word-initial consonant. We investigated pronunciation variation in word-final alveolar stop consonants in storybooks read by forty-eight mothers in adult-directed or infant-directed style to infants aged approximately 0;3, 0;9, 1;1, or 1;8. We focused on phonological environments where regressive place assimilation could occur, i.e., when the stop preceded a word-initial labial or velar consonant. Spectrogram, waveform, and perceptual evidence was used to classify tokens into four pronunciation categories: canonical, assimilated, glottalized, or deleted. Results showed a reliable tendency for canonical variants to occur in infant-directed speech more often than in adult-directed speech. However, the otherwise very similar distributions of variants across addressee and age group suggested that infants largely experience statistical distributions of non-canonical consonantal pronunciation variants that mirror those experienced by adults.

When a deviant (oddball) stimulus is presented within a series of otherwise identical (standard) stimuli, the duration of the oddball tends to be overestimated. Two experiments investigated factors affecting systematic distortions in the perceived duration of oddball stimuli. Both experiments used an auditory oddball paradigm where oddball tones varied in both their pitch distance from the pitch of a standard tone and their likelihood of occurrence. Experiment 1 revealed that (1) far-pitch oddballs were perceived to be longer than near-pitch oddballs, (2) effects of pitch distance were greater in low-likelihood conditions, and (3) oddballs in later serial positions were perceived to be longer than oddballs in earlier serial positions. The above effects held regardless of whether oddballs were higher or lower in pitch than the standard. Experiment 2 revealed a pattern of response times in an oddball detection task that generally paralleled the pattern of data observed in Experiment 1; across conditions, there was a negative correlation between detection times and perceived duration. Taken together, the results suggest that the observed effects of oddball pitch, likelihood, and position on perceived duration are at least partly driven by how quickly individuals are able to initiate timing the oddball following its onset. Implications for different theoretical accounts of the oddball effect are discussed.

A number of accounts of human auditory perception assume that listeners use prior stimulus context to generate predictions about future stimulation. Here, we tested an auditory pitch-motion hypothesis that was developed from this perspective. Listeners judged either the time change (i.e., duration) or pitch change of a comparison frequency glide relative to a standard (referent) glide. Under a constant-velocity assumption, listeners were hypothesized to use the pitch velocity (Δf/Δt) of the standard glide to generate predictions about the pitch velocity of the comparison glide, leading to perceptual distortions along the to-be-judged dimension when the velocities of the two glides differed. These predictions were borne out in the pattern of relative points of subjective equality by a significant three-way interaction between the velocities of the two glides and task. In general, listeners' judgments along the task-relevant dimension (pitch or time) were affected by expectations generated by the constant-velocity standard, but in an opposite manner for the two stimulus dimensions. When the comparison glide velocity was faster than the standard, listeners overestimated time change, but underestimated pitch change, whereas when the comparison glide velocity was slower than the standard, listeners underestimated time change, but overestimated pitch change. Perceptual distortions were least evident when the velocities of the standard and comparison glides were matched. Fits of an imputed velocity model further revealed increasingly larger distortions at faster velocities. The present findings provide support for the auditory pitch-motion hypothesis and add to a larger body of work revealing a role for active prediction in human auditory perception.

Behavioral inhibition (BI) increases vulnerability to develop anxiety disorders and is typified by avoidance and withdrawal from novel objects, people, and situations. The present study considered the relationship between BI and temperamental risk factors, such as trait anxiety and acquisition rate of a classically conditioned eyeblink response. One-hundred seventy-four healthy undergraduate students (mean age 20.3 years, 71.8% female) were given the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory and a battery of self-report measures of BI consisting of the Adult and Retrospective Measures of Behavioral Inhibition (AMBI/RMBI) and the Concurrent and Retrospective Self Report of Inhibition (CSRI/RSRI). Participants then underwent standard delay classical eyeblink conditioning consisting of 45 trials with a 500-ms CS overlapping and co-terminating with a 10-ms airpuff US. Individuals with higher scores on the AMBI and Trait Anxiety Inventory, but not the other measures, showed faster acquisition of a conditioned eyeblink response than individuals with lower scores. Results support a relationship between facilitated acquisition of inter-stimulus relationships and risk for anxiety, and suggest that some measures assessing anxiety vulnerability better capture this relationship than others.

The behavioral and neurobiological connections between play and the development of critical cognitive functions, such as attention, remain largely unknown. We do not yet know how these connections relate to the formation of specific abilities, such as spatial ability, and to learning in formal environments, such as in the classroom. Insights into these issues would be beneficial not only for understanding play, attention, and learning individually, but also for the development of more efficacious systems for learning and for the treatment of neurodevelopmental disorders. Different operational definitions of play can incorporate or exclude varying types of behavior, emphasize varying developmental time points, and motivate different research questions. Relevant questions to be explored in this area include, How do particular kinds of play relate to the development of particular kinds of abilities later in life? How does play vary across societies and species in the context of evolution? Does play facilitate a shift from reactive to predictive timing, and is its connection to timing unique or particularly significant? This report will outline important research steps that need to be taken in order to address these and other questions about play, human activity, and cognitive functions., (© 2013 The Authors. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences published by Wiley Periodicals Inc. on behalf of The New York Academy of Sciences.)

Purpose: As children mature, changes in voice spectral characteristics co-vary with changes in speech, language, and behavior. In this study, spectral characteristics were manipulated to alter the perceived ages of talkers' voices while leaving critical acoustic-prosodic correlates intact, to determine whether perceived age differences were associated with differences in judgments of prosodic, segmental, and talker attributes., Method: Speech was modified by lowering formants and fundamental frequency, for 5-year-old children's utterances, or raising them, for adult caregivers' utterances. Next, participants differing in awareness of the manipulation (Experiment 1A) or amount of speech-language training (Experiment 1B) made judgments of prosodic, segmental, and talker attributes. Experiment 2 investigated the effects of spectral modification on intelligibility. Finally, in Experiment 3, trained analysts used formal prosody coding to assess prosodic characteristics of spectrally modified and unmodified speech., Results: Differences in perceived age were associated with differences in ratings of speech rate, fluency, intelligibility, likeability, anxiety, cognitive impairment, and speech-language disorder/delay; effects of training and awareness of the manipulation on ratings were limited. There were no significant effects of the manipulation on intelligibility or formally coded prosody judgments., Conclusion: Age-related voice characteristics can greatly affect judgments of speech and talker characteristics, raising cautionary notes for developmental research and clinical work.

The three experiments reported here demonstrated a cross-modal influence of an auditory rhythm on the temporal allocation of visual attention. In Experiment 1, participants moved their eyes to a test dot with a temporal onset that was either synchronous or asynchronous with a preceding auditory rhythm. Saccadic latencies were faster for the synchronous condition than for the asynchronous conditions. In Experiment 2, the effect was replicated in a condition in which the auditory context stopped prior to the onset of the test dot, and the effect did not occur in a condition in which auditory tones were presented at irregular intervals. Experiment 3 replicated the effect using an accuracy measure within a nontimed visual task. Together, the experiments' findings support a general entrainment perspective on attention to events over time.

Increasing evidence shows that the neural circuits involved in beat perception overlap with motor circuitry even in the absence of overt movement. This study investigated effects of tempo on beat-based processing by combining functional magnetic resonance imaging with a perceptual timing paradigm where participants made simple temporal judgments about short rhythmic sequences. Of central interest were judgments about ambiguous test rhythms where the perceived direction of a timing deviation ("speeding up" vs. "slowing down") depended on the induction of an implied beat. Successful beat induction was reduced when the implied beat was at a slower tempo (1,500 ms) than when it was at a faster tempo (600 ms). Decreased beat induction was accompanied by decreased functional activity in the basal ganglia, premotor and supplementary motor regions, and thalamus. Findings support the conclusion that rhythms presented at a slow tempo reduce involvement of a striato-thalamo-cortico network in beat-based processing., (© 2012 New York Academy of Sciences.)

Two experiments investigated the effects of musicality and motivational orientation on auditory category learning. In both experiments, participants learned to classify tone stimuli that varied in frequency and duration according to an initially unknown disjunctive rule; feedback involved gaining points for correct responses (a gains reward structure) or losing points for incorrect responses (a losses reward structure). For Experiment 1, participants were told at the start that musicians typically outperform nonmusicians on the task, and then they were asked to identify themselves as either a "musician" or a "nonmusician." For Experiment 2, participants were given either a promotion focus prime (a performance-based opportunity to gain entry into a raffle) or a prevention focus prime (a performance-based criterion that needed to be maintained to avoid losing an entry into a raffle) at the start of the experiment. Consistent with a regulatory-fit hypothesis, self-identified musicians and promotion-primed participants given a gains reward structure made more correct tone classifications and were more likely to discover the optimal disjunctive rule than were musicians and promotion-primed participants experiencing losses. Reward structure (gains vs. losses) had inconsistent effects on the performance of nonmusicians, and a weaker regulatory-fit effect was found for the prevention focus prime. Overall, the findings from this study demonstrate a regulatory-fit effect in the domain of auditory category learning and show that motivational orientation may contribute to musician performance advantages in auditory perception.