Schneider, Bruce
Contact Information
Dr. Schneider arrived at the University of Toronto Mississauga (formerly Erindale College) in 1974, after having taught for 7 years at Columbia University in New York. He is the Director of the Centre for Research on Biological Communication Systems (CRBCS), and the leader of an eight-member, multi-university CIHR Research Group investigating "Sensory and Cognitive Aging." He also heads the CIHR Strategic Training Program on "Communication and Social Interaction in Healthy Aging," which recently won an award from the American Psychology Association for Innovation in Graduate Education.
Publications
Schneider, B. A., Daneman, M., Murphy, D. R., & Kwong See, S. (2000). Listening to discourse in distracting settings: The effects of aging. Psychology and Aging, 15, 110-125.
Parker, S., Murphy, D. R., & Schneider, B. A. (2002). Top-down gain control in the auditory system: Evidence from identification and discrimination studies. Perception & Psychophysics, 64, 598-615.
Schneider, B.A., Daneman, M., & Pichora-Fuller, M.K. (2002). Listening in aging adults: From discourse comprehension to psychoacoustics.. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 56, 139-152.
Li, L., Daneman, M., Qi, J., & Schneider, B.A. (2004). Does the Information Content of an Irrelevant Source Differentially Affect Speech Recognition in Younger and Older Adults? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30, 107
Schneider, B. A., Daneman, M., & Murphy, D. R. (2005). Speech comprehension difficulties in older adults: Cognitive slowing or age-related changes in hearing? Psychology and Aging, 20, 261-271.
Research
I am fascinated by how the auditory and visual systems gather, encode and organize information. Currently, I, and several colleagues, are studying how age related changes in hearing and vision affect an older adult’s ability to comprehend speech. I am also interested in the ways in which knowledge and expectations alter how the auditory and visual systems encode basic stimulus properties such as the intensity of a sound, or the degree of visual contrast in a scene.