This research will involve two programs: auditory serial probe recognition for memory strategy analysis, and discriminability of stimulus dimensions (pitch, rhythm, melodic sequences) in music perception. These studies will be conducted with humans in order to obtain comparisons under identical conditions with monkeys. The immediate goal is to establish a human auditory processing laboratory to study cognitive processing of complex nonverbal sounds and verbal sounds to determine memory mechanisms for these and how they are influence by language mediation. Same/Different and Serial Probe Recognition tasks will be used--sequential lists of stimuli are presented followed by a single probe stimulus. The subject responds to indicate whether or not the probe was in the list. Studies will manipulate list length (from single item to twenty items or more), retention intervals (between list items, between list and probe, and between trials), and number of stimuli used (high interference--small set size, low interference--large set size) to determine how auditory stimuli are processed and remembered. The long range goal is to study auditory processing of complex verbal, nonverbal, and musical stimuli, and to determine the critical variables involved. The results will be important for the study of: language mediated processing of auditory stimuli, differences in processing strategies across sense modalities, the similarities and differences in auditory processing in verbal humans and nonverbal monkeys, and viable animal models to develop remedial therapy techniques for human auditory dysfunctions.
