Last week I was in Linköping, Sweden, for the Cognitive Hearing Science for Communication conference. This is the second such conference, and it was great—a very interdisciplinary group of people interested in speech comprehension and cognitive challenge. Topics included audiovisual speech perception, speech processing in hearing aid users, ways to measure "listening effort", and neural responses to challenging listening conditions (among many others). Other speakers included my PhD advisor Art Wingfield, current Wash U colleague Mitch Sommers, and Cambridge-connected collaborators Ingrid Johnsrude and Jenni Rodd. All told there were a number of extremely interesting talks, and it was great to see a number of old friends, as well as meet some new ones.
It was also very encouraging to see so many people interested in the interface between hearing and cognition, and how this affects everyday communication. I'm already looking forward to the next conference!
