István Winkler

István Winkler
Born	February 8, 1958 Budapest, Hungary
Nationality	Hungarian
Fields	perception memory event-related brain potentials
Institutions	Budapest University of Technology and Economics Eötvös Loránd University Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences University of Helsinki University of Szeged Institute of Psychology, Szeged
Notable awards	Annual Award for Best PhD Thesis (University of Helsinki, 1994) Samuel Sutton Award for Distinguished Contribution to Human ERPs and Cognition (Samuel Sutton Foundation, 1995) Kardos Lajos Commemorative Medal (Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2004)

István Winkler (8 February 1958, Budapest) is a Hungarian psychologist. He is Scientific Advisor (2005-) and Head of the Department of General Psychology (2000-) 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 (such as the European Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Psychophysiology, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, Cognitive Brain Research and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA). 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.^[1] These results suggest that innate perceptual processes support early preference for music and fast acquisition of communications skills.^[2]

Selected studies

In Hungarian

Sleeping newborn infant participating in the experiment, the mother of the baby was present during the procedure

• Winkler, I. & Czigler I. (1997). "Kognitív pszichofiziológia: Agyi elektromos változások és humán megismerési folyamatok". Magyar Tudomány', 4. (Cognitive psychophysiology: brain responses and human cognitive processes)^[3]
• Czigler, I. & Winkler, I. (1998). "Független modulok és feldolgozási függőség: alulnézet". In: László, L. (Ed.), Élettörténet és megismerés. (pp. 22–32). Budapest: Scientia Humana. (Independent modules and processing dependency: bottom-view)
• Winkler, I. et al. (2002). "Automatikus válaszdetekció a látásban". In: Czigler, I., Halázs, L. & Marton, M. (Eds.). Az általánostól a különösig (pp. 132–148). Budapest: Gondolat. ISBN 963-9450-16-2 (Automatic response detection in vision)
• Winkler, I. Érzékelés, észlelés : "Hangok szervezése és leképezése". In: Pléh, Csaba et al. (Ed.) Kognitív idegtudomány. (2003) Budapest : Osiris. ISBN 963-389-313-5 (Sensation, perception: the structuring and mapping of sounds)
• Winkler, I. et al. (2009). "Már az újszülötteknek is van ritmusérzékük c. cikkének visszhangja". (reflections on his article "Newborn infants detect the beat in music")^[4]

In English

• István Winkler’s articles published in English
• Winkler, I., Cowan, N., Csépe, V., Czigler, I. & Näätänen, R. (1996). "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. (1999). "Brain responses reveal the learning of foreign language phonemes". Psychophysiology, 36, 638-642.
• Czigler, I., Balázs, L., & Winkler, I. (2002). "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. (2003). "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. (2007). "Processing acoustic change and novelty in newborn infants". European Journal of Neuroscience, 26, 265–274.
• Winkler, I. (2007). "Interpreting the mismatch negativity (MMN)". 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 (abstract) PNAS^[5]

Society fellowships

• Member of the Society for Psychophysiological Research^[6]
• Member of the Editorial Board of Pszichológia, the journal of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Research Institute for Psychology^[7]

Awards

• Annual Award for Best PhD Thesis (University of Helsinki, 1994)
• Samuel Sutton Award for Distinguished Contribution to Human ERPs and Cognition (Samuel Sutton Foundation, 1995)
• Kardos Lajos Commemorative Medal (Institute for Psychology, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2004)

See also

• Beat induction
• Henkjan Honing
• Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Institute of Psychology (Szeged)

References

• From Hungarian Wikipedia
• A lélektan 80 éves története a szegedi egyetemen. = The Institute of Psychology at the University of Szeged is 80 years old (1929–2009) / ed. by Ágnes Szokolszky; authors Szokolszky Ágnes, Pataki Márta, Polyák Kamilla et al. Szeged, JATEPress, 2009. 302 p. István Winkler see 220-222. p. ISBN 978-963-482-959-1
• hirado.hu/MTI

1. István Winkler et al.: "Newborn infants detect the beat in music", 18 January 2009 (For the full text article see the homepage of PNAS)
2. "Newborn Infants Detect the Beat in Music", Hungarian Academy of Sciences, News
3. For the full text article see the homepage of MATARKA
4. Reflections
5. http://www.pnas.org/content/106/7/2468
6. Society for Psychophysiological Research
7. More from the Pszichológia journal

External links

• István Winkler’s articles published in English
• István Winkler et al., Newborn infants detect the beat in music, early edition at PNAS (full text, pdf format)
• Reflections to his article "Newborn infants detect the beat in music" (18-02-2009)
• a-ne-na, video
• Reflections to his article „Newborn Infants Detect the Beat in Music” (28-05-2009)
• Winkler István et al.: additional information to “Newborn infants detect the beat in music”, images and video recording
• István Winkler, Academy of Sciences, Research Institute for Psychology
• István Winkler’s webpage
• István Winkler’s personal file at the homepage of the Hungarian Doctoral Council