First summerschool on Auditory Cognition: July, 7-14, 2011

[Tjeerd Andringa <tjeerd@xxxxxxxxx>]

[Please forward this to students who might be interested]

Between July 7th and July 14th, 2011, we will organize the first summerschool exclusively focused on the topic of "Auditory Cognition - Listening in the Real World". The summerschool will be held in Groningen, The Netherlands. Part of the summerschool is a social program organized by students of the AI-department in Groningen.

Auditory cognition covers all processes from the reception of sounds to the generation of an adaptive response. The response can vary from detecting sound sources, via the generation of a matching narrative or even a formal complaint about sound annoyance, to simple enjoyment of the sonic ambiance. Auditory cognition is therefore by necessity aimed at cognitive processes in real-world conditions. 

Consequently the summerschool will cover a combination of theory and practice. The theory covers the many levels of processing of audition. This is fairly challenging since this covers everything from advanced signal processing to modern theories of attention, awareness, and emotion regulation. The lab sessions in the afternoon cover many practical aspects. The students will learn to make proper recordings, do a number of key experiments, learn to use computational models of sound processing, build simple but effective sound recognition systems, and they will be introduced to the body of methodological techniques associated with this field. 

The summerschool is intended for masters and PhD-students with an interest in auditory cognition. Participants may come from a wide range of backgrounds such as biology, psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, music, artificial intelligence, etc. The topic of the summerschool is broad, so no one will have a perfect background and everyone can bring something of their own background to the summerschool. Some rudimentary programming skills will be useful.

Confirmed teachers
•	Susan Denham: models of auditory scene analysis
•	Tjeerd Andringa: auditory cognition, soundscapes
•	Deniz Baskent: audiology, cognitive aspects of hearing loss and cochlear implants.
•	Roy Patterson: categorisation using auditory models
•	David Prior: composer and sound artist  who has a strong interest in soundscapes 

The first deadline for applying is the 30th of April. For more information visit our website at www.acgsummerschool.com.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the secretary of our summer school committee: 
Sjors Lutjeboer - acgsummerschool@xxxxxx .

Kind regards,

Tjeerd Andringa and Susan Dunham