Thursday, April 1, 2010

Listen With Your Eyes? The McGurk Effect

So here's a short experiment. Watch this five second video with the sound on. Try and determine what he is saying.

Done? Now, close your eyes and just listen to the video. What did you hear? The majority will hear "da da da" when watching the video, and then hear "ba ba ba" when they close their eyes and just listen to the video. The speaker is actually mouthing the syllables "ga ga ga." The appearance of "ga ga ga" in conjunction with the sound "ba ba ba" causes most people to hear "da da da." Apparently speech perception is a multi-modal ability that involves more than just the ears. Fascinating!

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