Learning temporal structure

A conversation or a melody unfolds one moment at a time, yet we often anticipate what comes next. How do we acquire this ability? We study how brains learn the order, timing, and relationships between events—and how this knowledge helps us recognize patterns, form expectations, and make sense of new experiences. We ask how learners discover structure across different timescales, from the spacing between sounds to the organization of a phrase. How do expectations change when a familiar pattern is interrupted, and when does learning transfer to a new sequence?

These questions build on research into statistical learning, which examines how experience reveals regularities among events (Saffran et al., 1996), and dynamic attending theory, which explains how temporal patterns can guide attention toward expected moments (Large & Jones, 1999). Together, these traditions connect learning what comes next with anticipating when it will happen. They also motivate our interest in how learned expectations guide listening and adapt as the patterns around us change.