MARCS Monday Meeting (MMM)

MARCS Monday Meeting (MMM) Room BA-3.G.55, Bankstown campus

Join us at the next MMM as Professor Best delivers a follow up presentation on 'Natural phonetic variation and early word recognition', and Dr MacRitchie presents on 'Learning through music'.

Topic: Natural phonetic variation and early word recognition: Toddlers’ recognition of familiar words across unfamiliar regional accents
Speaker: Professor Cathi Best

Abstract: Much is known about infants’ ability to detect critical consonant or vowel mispronunciations of words, which signals a grasp of the principle of phonological distinctiveness (Best, 2015). However, recognizing words despite non-distinctive phonetic variation in regional accents, or phonological constancy, is also crucial for lexical acquisition. We have conducted a number of studies on phonological constancy in toddlers’ word recognition across English accents, and how it may relate to their vocabulary size. More recently, we have examined how young children adapt to accent variation. Implications for theories of early spoken word recognition and models of how episodic memory affect lexical retrieval, will be discussed. Relevance to adult second language speech and word learning will also be considered.


Topic: Optimising motor learning through new musical instrument interface design
Speaker: Dr Jennifer MacRitchie

Abstract: New musical instrument and interface design is a growing field, particularly for the purposes of increasing access to music for a wide variety of abilities. However, few empirical experiments have been performed that test the contribution of certain design features to the rate of musical learning. This research focuses on how differing spatial arrangements of pitches impact, over a single session, on the learnability and playability of melodic exercises and the transfer of that learning to new melodies. A set of experiments were designed to test the effects of 1) pitch axis direction and major second adjacency on performance accuracy of musicians and 2) isomorphism (whether a given spatial relationship consistently produces the same musical interval) on the performance accuracy of both musicians and non-musicians. Results show that isomorphism, major second adjacency and a vertical pitch axis are all of benefits to those already with musical expertise when learning to play a new pitch layout. For participants who are learning a musical instrument for the first time, confounding factors involved in the design of pitch layout variants may temper these positive effects.

We thank you for your continued attendance at the MMM's.  Let's keep the momentum going.

MARCS staff and students are reminded that all meetings and workshops have an important role in building and maintaining the sense of community which is central to the success of MARCS as a cooperative and energetic research institute.  Your attendance is both welcomed and expected.

The zoom ID is: 627 146 998. Link to zoom https://uws.zoom.us/j/627146998