'Um… so, today we'll, um.., learn about': Neural Tracking of Real-Life Spoken Language

• Applicant: Dr. Martin Bleichner
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 490839860

Whether at school, university, or work, we hear lectures from other people every day. Due to the pandemic, schools rely again more on frontal teaching in recent weeks and months. Due to hygiene regulations, group work and other alternative teaching formats can often no longer be implemented. To benefit from this kind of knowledge transfer, children and adults have to focus their attention on individual speakers over extended periods of time. How well this works depends on various factors. With an exciting topic, we can still listen to a boring presentation. Frequent interruptions in the flow of speech by 'uhms' make it difficult for us to follow a lecture. If we cannot understand the speaker well because of background noise, we will lose interest even in our favorite topic. Dealing with these various disorders varies from person to person. In this German-Israeli cooperation project, we examine the attention of the listener in realistic lecture situations. Methodical and technical developments in recent years allow brain activity to be directly related to natural language. This can be used to examine, for example, how we process natural language or whether we are listening to a speaker. With the advancement of mobile electroencephalography (EEG), examining neurophysiological processes in everyday life is coming within reach. We would like to further develop these procedures by gaining a better understanding of the many factors that differ between the laboratory and the classroom. We want to know how the peculiarities of a speaker and the background noise affect the listener. To answer these questions, we measure brain activity using EEG while test subjects listen to lectures. In the first project phase, we characterize video recordings of lectures in Hebrew and German and create a detailed description of the language material. In contrast to the kind of language that we know from television or radio, language in everyday situations is much more unpolished. For example, a lecturer hesitates, repeats parts of a sentence, does not finish a sentence or uses filler words such as ‘uhm’. In the second phase of the project, we use EEG to investigate how the speaker-specific factors identified in phase 1 affect the listeners and how they influence attention. In the third project phase, we then deal with the influence of additional external noise on the listener, such as the hum of the air conditioning or the noises of other children. We create the necessary methodological foundations to examine attention directly in the classroom or lecture hall.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Israel
• International Co-Applicant: Dr. Elana Zion Golumbic