Talk:Psycholinguistics/Neural Basis of Speech Perception
For the most part, this chapter is thorough and covers the requisite bases, but, as is always the case, there is certainly some room for improvements.
The research was seemingly thorough, from a relatively wide variety of authors and time periods. However, I did note that the reference list was lacking any direct references to the original Wernicke papers, although his work is mentioned in the text. If the actual paper wasn’t used, it should be noted somewhere that it was Wernicke as cited in Source X, and not the original work. But other than small things like that, the papers cited contain information based on both lesion and imaging studies which provides a broad perspective.
The content is decently arranged, and follows a logical proceeding of knowledge for the general layout of the chapter. Within the individual topics the presentation of ideas were somewhat more muddled, and I felt could benefit from the implementation of more transitional language and some sort of coherent thread for the reader to follow along. For example, perhaps following the process of the perception of a word from start to finish, following the flow of a specific word through the various pathways and explain the functions of each part in relation to a specific word or phrase in order to give the reader that consistent context. This would help it feel less like reading a dense review paper and more like an educational tool and hopefully reduce the amount of rereading and head-scratching I found myself doing.
The content itself seems to be appropriate and hit the right notes, although perhaps weighted a little too heavily on the ventral stream. The chapter does mention that this imbalance is reflective of the literature, which may well be the case and therefore not much can be done, but as the uninitiated reader, it seems like there should be more to it (as it stands there are only 4 sentences or so), even if it is relatively speculative in comparison to the ventral stream research. I did very much enjoy the point about different interpretations of a study’s results, as most textbooks I’ve read often fall victim to that practice themselves, stating the author’s conclusions as fact without making any comment on the actual ambiguity involved.
As far as the writing style goes, I found it a little bit on the dense side, leaning more towards academic journal than educational tool, but it was generally well written. There were a few grammatical mistakes here and there, and some sentences that I felt might be missing a word or were phrased particularly confusingly. I've emailed my comments on this to the author and attached it ot the assignment submission.
My biggest criticism of the chapter as it stands right now is with its formatting. When discussing anatomy, particularly of the brain, I find it imperative that there are diagrams and visual aids of some sort, as the brain is without many obvious and familiar landmarks, especially to those not intimately acquainted with it, and the names of things are often somewhat abstract. Having visual aids will help not only to cement the information for more verbal learners, but will also provide a lifeline for the more visually inclined learners who will be totally lost in the long winded anatomical terminology. I also felt that the introduction was a little bit long, trimming and condensing it a bit would help give it more impact, and allow some of the information currently in it to be used to flesh out the body of the chapter instead. Lastly, a brief conclusion at the end to collect the reader’s thoughts and tie off the loose ends would be helpful to ensure that the reader has connected all the appropriate dots and provide an accepted conclusion that the reader can compare to the conclusions that they have drawn while reading the material. This could also work in reverse, having a definite conclusion clearly stated can serve as a “light at the end of the tunnel” to help readers understand the relevant parts of the material if they are finding it too challenging.