This summer, I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from so many amazing scientists through our faculty seminars. Our first talk was given by Dr. Steve Nowicki, and it set the tone for all the interesting talks we heard this summer.
I appreciated that Dr. Nowicki told us both about his journey and his research. Most of his presentation focused on categorical perception, an interesting phenomenon that I’d never heard of—which is strange considering that it shapes how I perceive the world. Categorical perception occurs when things that occur along a spectrum, such as colors or vocal onset times, are grouped into distinct categories. For example, humans see the spectrum of wavelengths that make up a rainbow as distinct, mostly solid bands, even though the wavelengths differ within the bands as well. Another example is the difference between the sounds /pa/ and /ba/. They’re the same sound, but they differ in the amount of time between when the lips start moving to when the sound is made: the vocal onset time. Vocal onset times vary, but people mostly perceive them into two different categories without much confusion. Dr. Nowicki explained that categorical perception is cognitively less work than perceiving the whole spectrum.
Dr. Nowicki walked us through a few experiments that he had conducted on categorical perception, which I found really interesting. At the beginning of the summer, most of us hadn’t had the opportunity to understand how experiments were developed, their conclusions, and their implications, so Dr. Nowicki’s talk gave us a great introduction. He mostly focused on his work with birds, and how they differentiate between two very similar notes. He played us recordings that emphasized just how difficult it is to tell these notes apart!
Overall, I’m really happy I got to hear Dr. Nowicki’s fascinating talk about his research and journey through science!
