Noise in the Canon of Features and the Formation of Underspecified Mental Representations of Categories (B06)

• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551281144

This neurolinguistic project investigates how the human brain forms mental representations of categories of auditory objects when the informational content of the input signal is noisy due to considerable variation. It is hypothesized that those mental representations will be featurally underspecified. To this end, we investigate changes in electrophysiological measures before and after learning, as well as relearning of non-speech categories. The expected results would suggest that the underspecification of non-reliable features in mental representations is a general principle of cognitive systems when dealing with “noisy” input.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1760: SiNoSi: Silence, Noise and Signal in Language
• Applicant Institution: Universität Konstanz
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Carsten Eulitz