Hannon

Faculty

Erin E. Hannon, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor

Program:

Experimental

Lab:

Auditory Cognition and Development Lab

Email:

erin.hannon@unlv.edu

Phone:

(702) 895-4687

Accepting Gratuate Students 2012-2013:YES

Research Interests

Erin Hannon's research aims to understand the development of culture-specific and domain-specific knowledge of complex sound structures such as music and speech. Using cross-cultural comparisons, she examines how mechanisms underlying perception of music arise and change from infancy through adulthood as a result of experience in one's culture and cognitive developmental processes that are independent of culture. In current work she investigates (1) How perception of musical rhythm and meter is constrained during infancy and reorganized as a result of everyday exposure to music, (2) Whether or not there are critical period-like effects in acquisition of musical knowledge, (3) The development of intermodal perception in a musical context (e. g., perception of dancing and the development of synchronized movement to music), (4) Parallels between music and speech in rhythm perception and rule-learning, and (5) The effects of musical experience (such as music lessons) on musical and non-musical cognitive abilities.

Dr. Hannon earned her 2005 Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Cornell University.

Selected Publications

Hannon, E.E., Soley, G., & Levine, R.S. (2011). Constraints on infants' musical rhythm perception: Effects of interval ratio complexity and enculturation. Developmental Science, 14, 865-872.

Schachner, A.D. & Hannon, E.E. (2011). Infant-directed speech drives social preferences in 5-month-old infants. Developmental Psychology, 47, 19-25.

Soley, G. & Hannon, E.E. (2010). Infants prefer the musical meter of their own culture: A cross-cultural comparison. Developmental Psychology, 46, 286-292.

Hannon, E.E. (2009). Perceiving speech rhythm in music: Listeners categorize instrumental songs according to language of origin. Cognition, 111, 404-410.

Trehub, S. E. & Hannon, E. E. (2009). Conventional rhythms enhance infants' and adults' perception of musical patterns. Cortex, 45, 110-118.

Hannon, E. E., & Trainor, L. J. (2007). Music acquisition: Effects of enculturation and formal training on development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 466-472.

Hannon, E. E., & Trehub, S. E. (2005). Metrical categories in infancy and adulthood. Psychological Science, 16, 48-55.

Hannon, E. E., & Trehub, S. E. (2005). Tuning in to musical rhythms: Infants learn more readily than adults. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), 102, 12639-12643.