Statistical learning dynamically shapes auditory perception.

ABSTRACT: Humans and other animals use information about how likely it is for something to happen. The absolute and relative probability of an event influences a remarkable breadth of behaviors, from foraging for food to comprehending linguistic constructions -- even when these probabilities are learned implicitly. It is less clear how, and under what circumstances, statistical learning of simple probabilities might drive changes in perception and cognition. Here, across a series of 29 experiments, we probe listeners' sensitivity to task-irrelevant changes in the probability distribution of tones' acoustic frequency across tone-in-noise detection and tone duration decisions. We observe that the task-irrelevant frequency distribution influences the ability to detect a sound and the speed with which p

SUBMITTER: Luthra S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11418995 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature