Event

NACS Seminar: Andrea Halpern

Friday, April 12, 2019
10:15 a.m.
Bioscience Research Building, 1103

NACS Seminar Series

Speaker: Dr. Andrea Halpern, Bucknell University

Title: Imagine That! Individual Differences in Auditory Imagery for Music

Date: Friday, April 12, 2019

Time: 10:15am – 11:30am (As a courtesy to the speaker, please be in the room and seated by 10:15)

Place: 1103 Bioscience Research Building

Host: Dr. Jonathan Fritz

Abstract: 

Mental imagery abilities vary among individuals, as shown both by objective measures and by self-report. Few imagery studies consider auditory imagery, however.  In this talk, I will argue that a. there are individual differences in auditory imagery for music b. these can be captured via self-report and c. this self-report predicts some interesting behavioral and neural aspects of imagining music. The Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale is a short self-report measure encompassing both Vividness and Control of auditory imagery.  High scores on Vividness predict fewer source memory errors in distinguishing heard from imagined tunes on a recognition test, and better performance on pitch imitation tasks. Furthermore, higher scores are related to neural activity and gray matter volume in several brain areas that are known to be involved in auditory imagery.  Even though self-report measures encompass both cognitive and metacognitive aspects, they are useful tools in accounting for individual differences in high-level cognitive skills.