PSY 5993 - #58200
RESEARCH PROJECT ON AUDITORY PERCEPTION
SYLLABUS, FALL 2009
(3 Credits)

LECTURE/RECITATION:
T, TH: 1:00-2:15
Psychoacoustics Lab: N625 Elliott Hall, 612.625.8557

INSTRUCTOR:
Professor Neal Viemeister - nfv@umn.edu
Office: N264 Elliott, 612.625.4024, (Office hours by appointment only.)

ASSISTANTS:
Dr. Mark Stellmack - stell006@umn.edu
Andrew Byrne - byrn0050@umn.edu

DESCRIPTION:
This course is an introduction to research in human auditory perception that is intended to be taken concurrently with PSY 3902W, but enrollment in PSY 3902W is not required. The format is a combination of lecture, seminar, and lab. Students will participate in lectures and discussions of principles of auditory perception and research design in psychoacoustics. Students will design and perform an experiment that may be used to prepare a manuscript to satisfy PSY 3902W requirements. The experiments will be closely related to the active research being conducted in the Psychoacoustics Lab.

The major goal of this course is to give students an opportunity to engage in hands-on research and to acquire expertise in the various dimensions of research, including design, data collection, data analysis, laboratory skills, background scholarship, and scientific communication.

Among the students' requirements for this course: attend and participate in discussions, prepare an oral presentation of the student's research, and prepare a proposal for future research based on the student's research or other recent, published research in psychoacoustics. Although not required, it is preferred that students have taken PSY 3001W (Research Methods), PSY 3031 (Sensation and Perception) and/or PSY 3061 (Biological Psychology) and that students are comfortable with math and quantitative analysis.

COURSE MATERIALS:
Handouts, selected journal articles, and chapters.

GRADES:
40% - Participation in lab meetings (including presentation of journal articles).
30% - Oral research presentation.
30% - Final proposal.

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

SEPT 15:
Introduction to the course, initial discussion of research topic, and lab tour.

SEPT 17:
Introduction to perceptual measurement and psychophysics.
Reading: "Psychophysics and Hearing" (pdf)
Reading: "Sensory Discrimination and Weber’s Law" (pdf)
Reading: "Scaling Sensation Magnitude" (pdf)

SEPT 22:
Introduction to psychoacoustics and auditory neuroscience.
Reading: "Hearing: Physiology and Psychoacoustics".

SEPT 24:
Laboratory techniques and skills (computer programming, signal processing, calibration, etc).
Reading: "Adaptation of Masking" (pdf)

SEPT 29:
Discussion of research projects.
Reading: "Forward Masking by Enhanced Components in Harmonic Complexes"

OCT 1:
Discussion of research projects.
Reading: "Enhancement in the Marmoset Inferior Colliculus: Neural Correlates of Perceptual “Pop-out”"

OCT 1 - NOV 24:
*** DATA COLLECTION ***
Times arranged (approx. 3 hrs/week).

OCT 6 - NOV 24: (Tuesdays Only)
*** LAB MEETINGS ***
Research updates and journal article presentations.

DEC 1 & DEC 3:
PowerPoint presentations of research.

DEC 8 & DEC 10:
Discussion of research proposals.

DEC 15:
Course wrap-up and discussion of related projects/issues.

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