Dr Caroline Witton

Neurosciences Research Institute
School of Life and Health Sciences
Aston University
Birmingham B4 7ET
UK

mailto: C.Witton@aston.ac.uk
telephone: +44 (0) 121 204 4087

Lecturer on the Psychology Teaching Programme
Member of the Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences Research Group

Research Interests

I am interested in research into the auditory system; specifically the mechanisms by which the auditory system processes modulations, or changes, in sound. Processing of modulations, such as frequency and amplitude modulations (FM and AM), may be an important factor in the way that we perceive speech. With my collaborators at Newcastle, Oxford, and Aston, I have investigated the relationship between modulation perception and phonological skills in developmental dyslexia.

I am also interested in binaural hearing: i.e., the way in which we integrate inputs from both our ears when we carry out tasks such as localising sounds in space.

My previous research has been mostly based on psychophysical approaches, but I am currently learning to use magnetoencephalography (MEG), in the Wellcome Trust Lab for MEG studies here at Aston.

Full Publications

• Fisher AE, Barnes GR, Hillebrand A, Holliday IE, Witton C, Richards IL. (2006)
  Abnormality of mismatch negativity in response to tone omission in dyslexic adults.
  Brain research 1077 90-98
• Simpson MIG, Hadjipapas A, Barnes GR, Furlong PL, Witton C. (2005)
  Imaging the dynamics of the auditory steady-state evoked response.
  Neuroscience letters 385 (3) 195-197
• Hulslander J, Talcott JB, Witton C, DeFries J, Pennington B, Wadsworth S, Willcutt E, Olson R (2004)
  Sensory processing, reading, IQ and attention.
  Journal of experimental child psychology 88 (3) 274-295
• Witton C, Simpson MIG, Henning Gb, Rees A, Green GGR. (2003)
  Detection and direction-discrimination of diotic and dichotic ramp modulations in amplitude and phase.
  Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 113(1)468-477
• Foxton JM, Talcott JB, Witton C, Brace H, McIntyre F, Griffiths TD (2003)
  Reading skills are related to global, but not local, acoustic pattern perception.
  Nature Neuroscience 6 (4) 343-344
• Talcott JB, Gram A, Van Ingelghem M, Witton C, Stein JF, Toennessen FE. (2003)
  Impaired sensitivity to dynamic stimuli in poor readers of a regular orthography.
  Brain and language 87 (2) 259-266
• C. Witton, J.F. Stein, C. J. Stoodley, B.S. Rosner & J.B Talcott (2002)
  Separate Influences of Acoustic AM and FM Sensitivity on the Phonological Decoding Skills of Impaired and Normal Readers
  Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (14) 866-874
• J.B. Talcott, C. Witton. (2002)
  A sensory-linguistic approach to the development of normal and dysfunctional reading skills”.
  In: E. Witruk, A.D. Friederici, & T. Lachmann (Eds.), Basic Functions of Language, Reading and Reading Disability (pp 213-240). Boston: Kluwer.
• J.B. Talcott, C. Witton, G.S. Hebb, C.J. Stoodley, E.A. Westwood, S.J. France, P.C. Hansen, J.F. Stein.
  On the relationship between dynamic visual and auditory processing and literacy skills; results from a large primary-school study.
  Dyslexia. In Press.
• B.S. Rosner, J.B. Talcott, C. Witton, J.D. Hogg, A.J. Richardson, P.C. Hansen, & J.F. Stein.
  The perception of ‘sinewave speech’ by adult developmental dyslexics
  Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research. In Press.
• I.L. Richards, C. Witton, E. Moores, P. Reddy, G. Rippon, J.B. Talcott.
  The Dyslexia Ecosystem: Reply to Nicholson
  Dyslexia. In Press.
• C. Witton, M.I.G. Simpson, G.B. Henning, A. Rees, G.G.R. Green.
  Detection and direction-discrimination of diotic and dichotic ramp modulations in amplitude and phase
  Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. In Press.
• C. Witton, G.G.R. Green, A. Rees & G.B. Henning, (2000)
  Monaural and binaural detection of sinusoidal phase-modulation of a 500-Hz tone
  Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 108, 1826-1833.
• J.B. Talcott C. Witton (2000)
  A sensory-linguistic approach to normal and dysfunctional reading development
  To appear in Neuropsychology and Cognition; Basic functions of language and language disorders
  edited by Witruk, Friederici and Lachmann (Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands)
• C. Witton, J.B. Talcott, P.C. Hansen, A.J. Richardson, T.D. Griffiths, A. Rees, J.F. Stein, G.G.R. Green, (1998).
  Sensitivity to dynamic auditory and visual stimuli predicts nonword reading ability in both dyslexics and controls
  Current Biology 8, 791-797.
• J.B. Talcott, C. Witton, M.F. McClean, P.C. Hansen, A. Rees, G.G.R. Green, and J.F. Stein, (2000)
  Dynamic sensory sensitivity and children's word decoding skills
  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 97, 2952-2957.
• J.B. Talcott, C. Witton, M. McClean, P.C. Hansen, A. Rees, G.G.R. Green J.F. Stein (1999)
  Can sensitivity to auditory frequency modulation predict children's phonological and reading skills?
  NeuroReport, 10, 2045-2050
• T.D. Griffiths, G. Rees, A. Rees, G.G.R. Green, C. Witton, D. Rowe, C. B�chel , R. Turner & R.S.J. Frackowiak, (1998).
  Right parietal cortex is involved in the perception of sound movement in humans.
  Nature Neuroscience 1, 74-79
• T.D. Griffiths, D. Bates, A. Rees, C. Witton, A. Gholkar & G.G.R. Green. (1997)
  Sound movement detection deficit due tobrainstem lesion
  Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery & Psychiatry 62, 522-526.
• T.D. Griffiths, A. Rees, C. Witton, P.M. Cross, R.A. Shakir G.G.R. Green. (1997)
  Spatial and temporal auditory processing deficits following right hemisphere infarction: A psychophysical study
  Brain 120, 785-794.
• T.D. Griffiths, A.Rees, C. Witton, R.A. Shakir, G.B. Henning G.G.R. Green. (1995)
  Evidence for a sound movement area in the human cerebral cortex
  Nature 383, 425-427.
  

Dr Caroline Witton / Aston University / last updated February 2008