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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