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• Use care with words like “thing” and “where”.
For example:
– “things like vision”
– “visual illusions where colours are distorted”
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• Correlate means
– Determine the mathematical relationship
between two sets of numbers
– Determine the quantitative relationship between
two processes (using numbers)
• Correlate doesn’t mean “to investigate”
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• “affects” is a verb
• “effects” is a noun
– For example:
• Nicotine affects memory
• I will study the effects of nicotine on memory.
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• Read more.
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• Don’t constantly and redundantly use
unnecessary, unneeded and gratuitous modifiers.
For example:
– Parkinson’s disease is an extremely tragic disease that
very negatively impacts the happiness of the
unfortunate patients who suffer from it.
– Parkinson’s disease negatively impacts quality of life.
– Or consider leaving this unsaid...
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• The goal of the background section is that, by
the end of it, the reader has the same theory
as you!
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• Don’t use the word “now” unless you actually
mean “right now” (and you almost certainly
do not). For example:
– “Now, the visual system is very complex.”
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• Be concise.
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• Be even more concise.
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• Here’s an example of a tricky-to-compose sentence:
– “This could be interpreted as absolute pitch can be obtained
through vigorous practice starting at a young age. “
– “This could be interpreted to mean that absolute pitch can be
obtained through vigorous practice starting at a young age”
(better)
– “This suggests that absolute pitch can be obtained through
vigorous practice starting at a young age (even better)
– … therefore absolute pitch probably develops through early
practice” (best)
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• On your drafts I tended to provide a lot of
comment only on one or two paragraphs
(usually the first two). I’ll trust you to take
those comments and apply them throughout
your document.
– This means that sentences or paragraphs with
little or no comment aren’t necessarily “good”.
Spoken Input
– Phonology – how the word sounds; acoustic
• Phonemes are not invariant – different acoustic inputs are
“mapped” onto the same phoneme
Spoken Input
• The Segmentation Problem:
– The stream of acoustic input is not physically segmented into discrete phonemes, words,
phrases, etc.
– Silent gaps don’t always indicate (aren’t perceived as) interruptions in speech
Spoken Input
• The Segmentation Problem:
– The stream of acoustic input is not physically segmented into discrete phonemes, words,
phrases, etc.
– Continuous speech stream is sometimes perceived as having gaps
Spoken Input
• The Segmentation Problem:
– How do we solve the segmentation problem? Overlay
additional information:
• Prosody
– Inflection, syllabic stress, pauses
Spoken Input
• The Segmentation Problem:
– How do we solve the segmentation problem? Overlay
additional information:
• Vision
– Read lips!
– Demonstrated by the McGurk effect