Sensory auditory processing and intuitive sound detection : an investigation of musical experts and nonexperts

The auditory system can detect occasional changes (deviants) in acoustic regularities without the need for subjects to focus their attention on the sound material. Deviant detection is reflected in the elicitation of the mismatch negativity component (MMN) of the event-related potentials. In the studies presented in this thesis, the MMN is used to investigate the auditory abilities for detecting similarities and regularities in sound streams. To investigate the limits of these processes, professional musicians have been tested in some of the studies. The results show that auditory grouping is already more advanced in musicians than in nonmusicians and that the auditory system of musicians can, unlike that of nonmusicians, detect a numerical regularity of always four tones in a series. These results suggest that sensory auditory processing in musicians is not only a fine tuning of universal abilities, but is also qualitatively more advanced than in nonmusicians. In addition, the relationship between the auditory change-detection function and perception is examined. It is shown that, contrary to the generally accepted view, MMN elicitation does not necessarily correlate with perception. The outcome of the auditory change-detection function can be implicit and the implicit knowledge of the sound structure can, after training, be utilized for behaviorally correct intuitive sound detection. These results illustrate the automatic character of the sensory change detection function.

Feature integration in human vision

The earliest stages of human cortical visual processing can be conceived as extraction of local stimulus features. However, more complex visual functions, such as object recognition, require integration of multiple features. Recently, neural processes underlying feature integration in the visual system have been under intensive study. A specialized mid-level stage preceding the object recognition stage has been proposed to account for the processing of contours, surfaces and shapes as well as configuration. This thesis consists of four experimental, psychophysical studies on human visual feature integration. In two studies, classification image a recently developed psychophysical reverse correlation method was used. In this method visual noise is added to near-threshold stimuli. By investigating the relationship between random features in the noise and observer s perceptual decision in each trial, it is possible to estimate what features of the stimuli are critical for the task. The method allows visualizing the critical features that are used in a psychophysical task directly as a spatial correlation map, yielding an effective "behavioral receptive field". Visual context is known to modulate the perception of stimulus features. Some of these interactions are quite complex, and it is not known whether they reflect early or late stages of perceptual processing. The first study investigated the mechanisms of collinear facilitation, where nearby collinear Gabor flankers increase the detectability of a central Gabor. The behavioral receptive field of the mechanism mediating the detection of the central Gabor stimulus was measured by the classification image method. The results show that collinear flankers increase the extent of the behavioral receptive field for the central Gabor, in the direction of the flankers. The increased sensitivity at the ends of the receptive field suggests a low-level explanation for the facilitation. The second study investigated how visual features are integrated into percepts of surface brightness. A novel variant of the classification image method with brightness matching task was used. Many theories assume that perceived brightness is based on the analysis of luminance border features. Here, for the first time this assumption was directly tested. The classification images show that the perceived brightness of both an illusory Craik-O Brien-Cornsweet stimulus and a real uniform step stimulus depends solely on the border. Moreover, the spatial tuning of the features remains almost constant when the stimulus size is changed, suggesting that brightness perception is based on the output of a single spatial frequency channel. The third and fourth studies investigated global form integration in random-dot Glass patterns. In these patterns, a global form can be immediately perceived, if even a small proportion of random dots are paired to dipoles according to a geometrical rule. In the third study the discrimination of orientation structure in highly coherent concentric and Cartesian (straight) Glass patterns was measured. The results showed that the global form was more efficiently discriminated in concentric patterns. The fourth study investigated how form detectability depends on the global regularity of the Glass pattern. The local structure was either Cartesian or curved. It was shown that randomizing the local orientation deteriorated the performance only with the curved pattern. The results give support for the idea that curved and Cartesian patterns are processed in at least partially separate neural systems.

Keltaista ja kimaltavaa : kodin ja koulun yhteistyöstä koulun ja kodin yhteyteen

Through this study I aim to portray connections between home and school through the patterns of thought and action shared in everyday life in a certain community. My observations are primarily based upon interviews, writings and artwork by people from home (N=32) and school (N=13) contexts. Through the stories told, I depict the characters and characteristic features of the home-school interaction by generations. According to the material, in the school days of the grandparents the focus was on discipline and order. For the parents, the focus had shifted towards knowledge, while for the pupils today, the focus lies on evaluation, through which the upbringing of the child is steered towards favourable outcomes. Teachers and those people at home hold partially different understandings of home-school interaction, both of its manifested forms and potentials. The forms of contact in use today are largely seen as one-sided. Yearning for openness and regularity is shared by both sides, yet understood differently. Common causes for failure are said to lie in plain human difficulties in communication and social interaction, but deeply rooted traditions regarding forms of contact also cast a shadow on the route to successful co-operation. This study started around the idea, that home-school interaction should be steered towards the ex-change of constructive ideas between both the home and school environments. Combining the dif-ferent views gives to something to build upon. To test this idea, I drafted a practice period, which was implemented in a small pre-school environment in the fall of 1997. My focus of interest in this project was on the handling of ordinary life information in the schools. So I combined individual views, patterns of knowledge and understanding of the world into the process of teaching. Works of art and writings by the informants worked as tools for information processing and as practical forms of building home-school interaction. Experiences from the pre-school environ-ment were later on echoed in constructing home-school interaction in five other schools. In both these projects, the teaching in the school was based on stories, thoughts and performances put to-gether by the parents, grandparents and children at home. During these processes, the material used in this study, consisting of artwork, writings and interviews (N=501), was collected. The data shows that information originating from the home environments was both a motivating and interesting addition to the teaching. There even was a sense of pride when assessing the seeds of knowledge from one’s own roots. In most cases and subjects, the homegrown information content was seamlessly connected to the functions of school and the curriculum. This project initiated thought processes between pupils and teachers, adults, children and parents, teachers and parents, and also between generations. It appeared that many of the subjects covered had not been raised before between the various participant groups. I have a special interest here in visual expression and its various contextual meanings. There art material portrays how content matter and characteristic features of the adult and parent contexts reflect in the works of the children. Another clearly noticeable factor in the art material is the impact of time-related traditions and functions on the means of visual expression. Comparing the visual material to the written material reveals variances of meaning and possibilities between these forms of expression. The visual material appears to be related especially to portraying objects, action and usage. Processing through that making of images was noted to bring back memories of concrete structures, details and also emotions. This process offered the child an intensive social connection with the adults. In some cases, with children and adults alike, this project brought forth an ongoing relation to visual expression. During this study I end up changing the concept to ‘home-school collaboration’. This widely used concept guides and outlines the interaction between schools and homes. In order to broaden the field of possibilities, I choose to use the concept ‘school-home interconnection’. This concept forms better grounds for forming varying impressions and practices when building interactive contexts. This concept places the responsibility of bridging the connection-gap in the schools. Through the experiences and innovations of thought gained from these projects, I form a model of pedagogy that embraces the idea of school-home interconnection and builds on the various impres-sions and expressions contained in it. In this model, school makes use of the experiences, thoughts and conceptions from the home environment. Various forms of expression are used to portray and process this information. This joint evaluation and observation evolves thought patterns both in school and at home. Keywords: percieving, visuality, visual culture, art and text, visual expression, art education, growth in interaction, home-school collaboration, school-home interconnection, school-home interaction model.

The structure of Norway spruce (Picea abies [L.] Karst.) stems in relation to wood properties of sawn timber

An important challenge in forest industry is to get the appropriate raw material out from the forests to the wood processing industry. Growth and stem reconstruction simulators are therefore increasingly integrated in industrial conversion simulators, for linking the properties of wooden products to the three-dimensional structure of stems and their growing conditions. Static simulators predict the wood properties from stem dimensions at the end of a growth simulation period, whereas in dynamic approaches, the structural components, e.g. branches, are incremented along with the growth processes. The dynamic approach can be applied to stem reconstruction by predicting the three-dimensional stem structure from external tree variables (i.e. age, height) as a result of growth to the current state. In this study, a dynamic growth simulator, PipeQual, and a stem reconstruction simulator, RetroSTEM, are adapted to Norway spruce (Picea abies [L.] Karst.) to predict the three-dimensional structure of stems (tapers, branchiness, wood basic density) over time such that both simulators can be integrated in a sawing simulator. The parameterisation of the PipeQual and RetroSTEM simulators for Norway spruce relied on the theoretically based description of tree structure developing in the growth process and following certain conservative structural regularities while allowing for plasticity in the crown development. The crown expressed both regularity and plasticity in its development, as the vertical foliage density peaked regularly at about 5 m from the stem apex, varying below that with tree age and dominance position (Study I). Conservative stem structure was characterized in terms of (1) the pipe ratios between foliage mass and branch and stem cross-sectional areas at crown base, (2) the allometric relationship between foliage mass and crown length, (3) mean branch length relative to crown length and (4) form coefficients in branches and stem (Study II). The pipe ratio between branch and stem cross-sectional area at crown base, and mean branch length relative to the crown length may differ in trees before and after canopy closure, but the variation should be further analysed in stands of different ages and densities with varying site fertilities and climates. The predictions of the PipeQual and RetroSTEM simulators were evaluated by comparing the simulated values to measured ones (Study III, IV). Both simulators predicted stem taper and branch diameter at the individual tree level with a small bias. RetroSTEM predictions of wood density were accurate. For focusing on even more accurate predictions of stem diameters and branchiness along the stem, both simulators should be further improved by revising the following aspects in the simulators: the relationship between foliage and stem sapwood area in the upper stem, the error source in branch sizes, the crown base development and the height growth models in RetroSTEM. In Study V, the RetroSTEM simulator was integrated in the InnoSIM sawing simulator, and according to the pilot simulations, this turned out to be an efficient tool for readily producing stand scale information about stem sizes and structure when approximating the available assortments of wood products.

Distortion of Dimension under Quasiconformal Mappings

Quasiconformal mappings are natural generalizations of conformal mappings. They are homeomorphisms with 'bounded distortion' of which there exist several approaches. In this work we study dimension distortion properties of quasiconformal mappings both in the plane and in higher dimensional Euclidean setting. The thesis consists of a summary and three research articles. A basic property of quasiconformal mappings is the local Hölder continuity. It has long been conjectured that this regularity holds at the Sobolev level (Gehring's higher integrabilty conjecture). Optimal regularity would also provide sharp bounds for the distortion of Hausdorff dimension. The higher integrability conjecture was solved in the plane by Astala in 1994 and it is still open in higher dimensions. Thus in the plane we have a precise description how Hausdorff dimension changes under quasiconformal deformations for general sets. The first two articles contribute to two remaining issues in the planar theory. The first one concerns distortion of more special sets, for rectifiable sets we expect improved bounds to hold. The second issue consists of understanding distortion of dimension on a finer level, namely on the level of Hausdorff measures. In the third article we study flatness properties of quasiconformal images of spheres in a quantitative way. These also lead to nontrivial bounds for their Hausdorff dimension even in the n-dimensional case.

Dynamics of Finnish starlings in 1951-2005 : from monitoring to population modelling

Farmland bird species have been declining in Europe. Many declines have coincided with general intensification of farming practices. In Finland, replacement of mixed farming, including rotational pastures, with specialized cultivation has been one of the most drastic changes from the 1960s to the 1990s. This kind of habitat deterioration limits the persistence of populations, as has been previously indicated from local populations. Integrated population monitoring, which gathers species-specific information of population size and demography, can be used to assess the response of a population to environment changes also at a large spatial scale. I targeted my analysis at the Finnish starling (Sturnus vulgaris). Starlings are common breeders in farmland habitats, but severe declines of local populations have been reported from Finland in the 1970s and 1980s and later from other parts of Europe. Habitat deterioration (replacement of pasture and grassland habitats with specialized cultivation areas) limits reproductive success of the species. I analysed regional population data in order to exemplify the importance of agricultural change to bird population dynamics. I used nestling ringing and nest-card data from 1951 to 2005 in order to quantify population trends and per capita reproductive success within several geographical regions (south/north and west/east aspects). I used matrix modelling, acknowledging age-specific survival and fecundity parameters and density-dependence, to model population dynamics. Finnish starlings declined by 80% from the end of the 1960s up to the end of the 1980s. The observed patterns and the model indicated that the population decline was due to the decline of the carrying capacity of farmland habitats. The decline was most severe in north Finland where populations largely become extinct. However, habitat deterioration was most severe in the southern breeding areas. The deteriorations in habitat quality decreased reproduction, which finally caused the decline. I suggest that poorly-productive northern populations have been partly maintained by immigration from the highly-productive southern populations. As the southern populations declined, ceasing emigration caused the population extinction in north. This phenomenon was explained with source sink population dynamics, which I structured and verified on the basis of a spatially explicit simulation model. I found that southern Finnish starling population exhibits ten-year cyclic regularity, a phenomenon that can be explained with delayed density-dependence in reproduction.

Sijasynkretismi morfologian koetinkivenä

Syncretism and the overlapping of morphologi- cally distinct units or entire categories have different influences on morphosyntactically cumulative and less cumulative forms. The Finnic languages, in comparison to the more eastern Finno-Ugric languages, mainly display morphologically less complex forms. Morphologically there is a clear distinction in the way syncretism is manifested in the Finnic languages that, consequently, is one of the most distinct features in the inflectional system despite the close ge- nealogical affinity. This can concretely be seen in the differences in the case inflection of the southern, such as Livonian, Estonian and Votic, and northern Finnic languages, most notably Finnish, Karelian and Veps. The comparison of syncretism in these languages shows both cross-linguistic regularity and language-specific rules that determine syncretic forms. Diachronic change and the erosion of suffixal ele- ments are closely involved in the rise of syncretism. The paper exam- ines the symmetries and asymmetries in the occurrence of syncretic forms in Finnic case paradigms.

Korkeakoulupolitiikan dynamiikat Suomessa

The study scrutinizes the dynamics of the Finnish higher education political system. Dynamics is understood as the regularity of interaction between actors. By actors is meant the central institutions in the system. The theoretical framework of the study draws on earlier research in political science and higher education political studies. The theoretical model for analysis is built on agenda-setting theories. The theoretical model separates two dimensions of dynamics, namely the political situation and political possibilities. A political situation can be either favourable or contradictory to change. If the institutional framework within the higher education system is not compatible with the external factors of the system, the political situation is contradictory to change. To change the situation into a favourable one, one needs either to change the institutional structure or wait for external factors to change. Then again, the political possibilities can be either settled or politicized. Politicization means that new possibilities for action are found. Settled possibilities refer to routine actions performed according to old practices. The research tasks based on the theoretical model are: 1. To empirically analyse the political situation and the possibilities from the actors point of view. 2. To theoretically construct and empirically test a model for analysis of dynamics in the Finnish higher education politics. The research material consists of 25 thematic interviews with key persons in the higher education political system in 2008. In addition, there are also documents from different actors since the 1980s and statistical data. The material is analysed in four phases. In the first phase the emphasis is on trying to understand the interviewees and actors points of view. In the second phase the different types of research material are related to each other. In the third phase the findings are related to the theoretical model, which is constructed over the course of the analysis. In the fourth phase the interpretation is tested. The research distinguishes three historical periods in the Finnish higher education system and focuses on the last one. This is the era of the complex system beginning in the 1980s 1990s. Based on the interviews, four policy threads are identified and analysed in their historical context. Each of the policy threads represents one of the four possible dynamics identified in the theoretical model. The research policy thread functions according to reform dynamics. A coalition of innovation politics is able to use the politicized possibilities due to the political situation created by the conception of the national innovation system. The regional policy thread is in a gridlock dynamics. The combination of a political system based on provincial representation, a regional higher education institutional framework and outside pressure to streamline the higher education structure created a contradictory political situation. Because of this situation, the politicized possibilities in the so-called "regional development plan" do not have much effect. In the international policy thread, a consensual change dynamics is found. Through changes in the institutional framework, the higher education political system is moulded into a favourable situation. However, the possibilities are settled: a pragmatic national gaze prevailed. A dynamics of friction is found in the governance policy thread. A political situation where political-strategic and budgetary decision-making are separated is not favourable for change. In addition, as governance policy functions according to settled possibilities, the situation seems unchangeable. There are five central findings. First, the dynamics are different depending on the policy thread under scrutiny. Second, the settled possibilities in a policy thread seemed to influence other threads the most. Third, dynamics are much related to changes external to the higher education political system, the changing positions of the actors in different policy threads and the unexpected nature of the dynamics. Fourth, it is fruitful to analyse the dynamics with the theoretical model. Fifth, but only hypothetically and thus left for further research, it seems that the Finnish higher education politics is reactive and weak at politicization.

Patterns in permuted binary matrices

Reorganizing a dataset so that its hidden structure can be observed is useful in any data analysis task. For example, detecting a regularity in a dataset helps us to interpret the data, compress the data, and explain the processes behind the data. We study datasets that come in the form of binary matrices (tables with 0s and 1s). Our goal is to develop automatic methods that bring out certain patterns by permuting the rows and columns. We concentrate on the following patterns in binary matrices: consecutive-ones (C1P), simultaneous consecutive-ones (SC1P), nestedness, k-nestedness, and bandedness. These patterns reflect specific types of interplay and variation between the rows and columns, such as continuity and hierarchies. Furthermore, their combinatorial properties are interlinked, which helps us to develop the theory of binary matrices and efficient algorithms. Indeed, we can detect all these patterns in a binary matrix efficiently, that is, in polynomial time in the size of the matrix. Since real-world datasets often contain noise and errors, we rarely witness perfect patterns. Therefore we also need to assess how far an input matrix is from a pattern: we count the number of flips (from 0s to 1s or vice versa) needed to bring out the perfect pattern in the matrix. Unfortunately, for most patterns it is an NP-complete problem to find the minimum distance to a matrix that has the perfect pattern, which means that the existence of a polynomial-time algorithm is unlikely. To find patterns in datasets with noise, we need methods that are noise-tolerant and work in practical time with large datasets. The theory of binary matrices gives rise to robust heuristics that have good performance with synthetic data and discover easily interpretable structures in real-world datasets: dialectical variation in the spoken Finnish language, division of European locations by the hierarchies found in mammal occurrences, and co-occuring groups in network data. In addition to determining the distance from a dataset to a pattern, we need to determine whether the pattern is significant or a mere occurrence of a random chance. To this end, we use significance testing: we deem a dataset significant if it appears exceptional when compared to datasets generated from a certain null hypothesis. After detecting a significant pattern in a dataset, it is up to domain experts to interpret the results in the terms of the application.

A maximal operator, Carleson's embedding, and tent spaces for vector-valued functions

This thesis is concerned with the area of vector-valued Harmonic Analysis, where the central theme is to determine how results from classical Harmonic Analysis generalize to functions with values in an infinite dimensional Banach space. The work consists of three articles and an introduction. The first article studies the Rademacher maximal function that was originally defined by T. Hytönen, A. McIntosh and P. Portal in 2008 in order to prove a vector-valued version of Carleson's embedding theorem. The boundedness of the corresponding maximal operator on Lebesgue-(Bochner) -spaces defines the RMF-property of the range space. It is shown that the RMF-property is equivalent to a weak type inequality, which does not depend for instance on the integrability exponent, hence providing more flexibility for the RMF-property. The second article, which is written in collaboration with T. Hytönen, studies a vector-valued Carleson's embedding theorem with respect to filtrations. An earlier proof of the dyadic version assumed that the range space satisfies a certain geometric type condition, which this article shows to be also necessary. The third article deals with a vector-valued generalizations of tent spaces, originally defined by R. R. Coifman, Y. Meyer and E. M. Stein in the 80's, and concerns especially the ones related to square functions. A natural assumption on the range space is then the UMD-property. The main result is an atomic decomposition for tent spaces with integrability exponent one. In order to suit the stochastic integrals appearing in the vector-valued formulation, the proof is based on a geometric lemma for cones and differs essentially from the classical proof. Vector-valued tent spaces have also found applications in functional calculi for bisectorial operators. In the introduction these three themes come together when studying paraproduct operators for vector-valued functions. The Rademacher maximal function and Carleson's embedding theorem were applied already by Hytönen, McIntosh and Portal in order to prove boundedness for the dyadic paraproduct operator on Lebesgue-Bochner -spaces assuming that the range space satisfies both UMD- and RMF-properties. Whether UMD implies RMF is thus an interesting question. Tent spaces, on the other hand, provide a method to study continuous time paraproduct operators, although the RMF-property is not yet understood in the framework of tent spaces.