McGurk effect (illusion)

 Speech understanding uses two senses - hearing (ears) and sight (eyes - watching the speaker's head - lips etc.) The McGurk Effect shows this up.

What you see influences what you hear (in the Lifeworld).

Speech perception is multi-modal.

The importance of lip movements is illustrated dramatically by the McGurk effect (McGurk & MacDonald, 1976). If a listener is presented with the sound "ba-ba" while the lips of a speaker are silently mouthing "ga-ga," then the listener hears the utterance "da-da," which is a compromise between the visual information and the acoustic information.

If the eyes of the listener are closed, then the perception becomes "ba-ba" (i.e., just the acoustic information). What I find remarkable about this effect is the strength of the auditory sensation. It is hard to believe when you are watching the speaker's lips that you are being played the same sound as when your eyes are closed. What we imagine to be purely auditory sensations are clearly influenced by visual information.
McGurk, H., & MacDonald, J. (1976). Hearing lips and seeing voices. Nature, 264, 746-748.

From:

Plack, Christopher, 2005, The Sense of Hearing, London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, page 232

Also http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~rosenblu/VSMcGurk.html

 

 SPEECH PERCEPTION BY EAR AND EYE / FACIAL ANIMATION at http://mambo.ucsc.edu/psl/pslfan.html
 
 Speech - a sight to behold - at http://scicom.ucsc.edu/SciNotes/9601/Speech/00Intro.html
 Wapedia - http://wapedia.mobi/en/McGurk_effect
 
 

The McGurk effect occurs because of visual dominance. See Oculocentrism or ocularocentrism - dominance of seeing in our senses

To take this further as academic debate - see Internalist Model of the senses

 

 

 

 

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