István Winkler is a Hungarian psychologist. He is Scientific Advisor and Head of the Department of General Psychology at the Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and Professor of the Institute of Psychology, Szeged, since 2008. His fields of research are perception, memory and event-related brain potentials.
Biography
Winkler graduated from the Radnóti Miklós Training High School of the Eötvös Loránd University. He then studied at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, and graduated in 1981. From 1980, he studied psychology at the Eötvös Loránd University, and went on to attain a diploma in psychology in 1985. Having made a commitment to psychology, he entered the psychology PhD program at the University of Helsinki in 1990, and received his PhD degree there, in 1993. In 1996, he was qualified as a Docent at the University of Helsinki. He defended his DSc dissertation in Budapest, at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, in 2005. He has been a professor at the Institute of Psychology, Szeged, since 2008. He has published over 100 papers in leading psychophysiological journals. He is an internationally well-known researcher of auditory electrophysiology with widespread research collaborations both with Hungarian and foreign researchers. In 2009, together with Henkjan Honing, he showed that newborn infants already have a sense of rhythm. These results suggest that innate perceptual processes support early preference for music and fast acquisition of communications skills.
Selected studies
In Hungarian
Winkler, I. & Czigler I.. "Kognitív pszichofiziológia: Agyi elektromos változások és humán megismerési folyamatok". Magyar Tudomány', 4.
Czigler, I. & Winkler, I.. "Független modulok és feldolgozási függőség: alulnézet". In: László, L., Élettörténet és megismerés.. Budapest: Scientia Humana.
Winkler, I. et al.. "Automatikus válaszdetekció a látásban". In: Czigler, I., Halázs, L. & Marton, M.. Az általánostól a különösig. Budapest: Gondolat.
Winkler, I. Érzékelés, észlelés : "Hangok szervezése és leképezése". In: Pléh, Csaba et al. Kognitív idegtudomány''. Budapest : Osiris.
Winkler, I. et al.. "Már az újszülötteknek is van ritmusérzékük c. cikkének visszhangja".
In English
Winkler, I., Cowan, N., Csépe, V., Czigler, I. & Näätänen, R.. "Interactions between transient and long-term auditory memory as reflected by the mismatch negativity". Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 8, 403-415.
Winkler, I., Kujala, T., Tiitinen, H., Sivonen, P., Alku, P., Lehtokoski, A., Czigler, I., Csépe, V., Ilmoniemi, R.J. & Näätänen, R.. "Brain responses reveal the learning of foreign language phonemes". Psychophysiology, 36, 638-642.
Czigler, I., Balázs, L., & Winkler, I.. "Memory-based detection of task-irrelevant visual changes". Psychophysiology, 39, 869–873.
Winkler, I., Kushnerenko, E., Horváth, J., Čeponienė, R., Fellman, V., Huotilainen, M., Näätänen, R., & Sussman, E.. "Newborn infants can organize the auditory world". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 100, 1182-1185.
Kushnerenko, E., Winkler, I., Horváth, J., Näätänen, R., Pavlov, I., Fellman, V., & Huotilainen, M.. "Processing acoustic change and novelty in newborn infants". European Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 265–274.
Winkler, I.. "Interpreting the mismatch negativity ". Journal of Psychophysiology, 21, 60-69.
"Newborn infants detect the beat in music" from István Winkler; Gábor P. Haden; Olivia Ladining; István Sziller; Henkjan Honing PNAS
