AIRS Annual Report Year 1 Sub-Theme 1.2: Multimodal Analysis

Submitted by Dr. Frank Russo (April 1, 2009 – March 31, 2010)

Projects based in greater Toronto area, Canada
(University of Toronto at Mississauga and Ryerson University)

  1. Auditory and visual perspectives on maternal speech and singing in different contexts (infant in view, out of view, or presented on video).

    Students working on this project: Judy Plantinga (postdoctoral fellow) will submit an abstract and present a summary of this study-in-progress. She will continue working on this project.

    Other students currently working on the project: Sari Park (B.A. student, Guelph U), Sara Oczak (B.Sc. student, UTM), Amy Kleynhans (B.A. Student, Ryerson).

  2. Age-related changes in vocal reproduction of intervals (ascending and descending perfect fifth) with different auditory models (voice, piano, flute) and auditory (vocal) vs. auditory-visual models.

    Students working on this project: Judy Plantinga (PDF, U of T Mississauga), Lily Zhou (B.Sc. student, McMaster), Lisa Chan (M.A. Student, Ryerson). Judy Plantinga and Lisa Chan will continue on the project.

  3. Age-related changes in singing proficiency for familiar songs (instrumental analysis of materials from Adachi & Trehub (1998)

    Students working on this project: Judy Plantinga (PDF, U of T Mississauga), Lily Zhou (B.Sc. student, McMaster), Jordan John (B.Sc. UTM), Nami KOYAMA (Master's student, Hokkaido University). Judy Plantinga will continue on the project.

  4. Pitch and interval reproduction as a function of age, choral experience, and interval conventionality

    Student working on this project: Beste Kalender (Ph.D., U of T) is leading this project and it will form her doctoral dissertation.

  5. Case study of singing by a 5-year-old child with cochlear implants

    Student working on this project: Anna Volkova (Ph.D., U of T). Anna will continue on the project.

  6. Infants' responsiveness to sung vs. spoken lyrics of songs

    Student working on this project: Marieve Corbeil (Ph.D., Brams, U de M, co-supervised by Isabelle Peretz) is leading this project and it will form part of her doctoral dissertation.

  7. Effectiveness of song vs. speech to regulate emotion in infants: Niusha Ghazban (Ph.D., Ryerson); Lisa Chan (M.A., Ryerson). Both students will continue with this project.

  8. Electromyographic assessment of mimicry in song perception: Lisa Chan (M.A., Ryerson). Different aspects of this work will be presented at AIRS and ICMPC and will form Lisa's master's thesis. Lisa plans to continue with singing-related work for her dissertation.

Projects based in Hokkaido, Japan
(Hokkaido University)

  1. An experiment was conducted using Canadian children's original happy/sad tunes to examine whether children's intended emotions were communicated to Japanese adult listeners. Data collection is in progress: Yo NAKANISHI, an undergraduate student at Hokkaido University.

  2. Adult interpretation of infant babbling as speech or singing. Data was collected from 86 college students (both men and women) about their interpretation of baby babble (to be presented at ICMPC11), and will collect data from Japanese fathers this Fall/Winter. Additional data will be collected from Chinese students as a pilot for a possible cross-cultural study of babble interpretation: Xing Xing DING, a Chinese research student at Hokkaido University. She may continue on as a master's student.

Projects based in Nova Scotia, Canada
(St. Francis Xavier University)

Dr. Hauf's Infant Action & Cognition Lab at St. Francis Xavier University is investigating the responsiveness of 5- to 7-month old infants to video displays of infant-directed (ID) singing and speaking. Stimuli are presented on an eyetracking screen. In addition to eye tracking, measures include body movements, vocalization, and heart rate: Tricia Brosha (4th year Bachelor of Arts - Honours in Psychology student, St. Francis Xavier) is currently working on this project and will continue to be involved throughout the year as she uses a portion of the project for her Honour's thesis to be completed by April, 2011.

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