60 Second Science?
A post just went up on the Scientific American website about the “McGurck effect”. Supposedly when you hear someone say the syllable “ba” and see them say “ga”, you’ll think you’re hearing the syllable “da”. They’ve even got a video to try it for yourself.
And even though you now know it’s an illusion—you will still, when you see the video, think you are hearing “da”.
Except it doesn’t work. So I called my mother over and didn’t tell her what was supposed to happen. Just showed the video and asked what syllable she heard. Right away, with no hesitation, she said he was saying “ba” but the lips were moving like “ga”. Not even a trace of the desired effect.
So are we mutants? Try it yourself. Try it on your unsuspecting friends and family members and ask them what they hear. And tell me what happens. Remember: it’s not science unless we can falsify it.
[UPDATE]: As I mention in the comments, I found the source of that video. There they say that the effect shows up in 98% of adults. So my mother and I are evidently among the 1/50 of adult humans who can separate visual and auditory inputs inside our heads.
Hey,
I tried it just now and it worked for myself. Was your video synced well with the audio? Maybe you are are a mutant after-all
Synced very well. I found another site (evidently the source for that video) which says the effect isn’t universal, but just occurs in 98% of adults.
I googled and ended up here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFPtc8BVdJk
which sounded like “da da” to me.
I went to the youtube link posted above, listened while watching, and heard “da da”. Then I played it again with my eyes closed and heard a very clear “ba ba”.
Ha ha. I hear “da da… da da… da da.”
I without a doubt hear “ba ba” even though that is not what it looks like he is saying. I think that they should run this again and pay attention to whether or not the people have studied other languages excessively.
I may have picked up the ability to distinguish, since I have learned from other languages that actual sounds leaving the mouth don’t always match up with what I think they should sound like.
It’s likely that you’d get a different result if you watched the video without foreknowledge of the effect. It’s my experience that knowing the “trick” to audio effects in particular makes them much easier to detect—for example, knowing how some of the audio effects in Lord of the Rings were done completely ruins certain scenes for me (I can’t watch the Balrog scene without imagining a cinderblock being dragged across asphalt, for instance), while knowing how visual effects were done never does.
lylebot: First, as I quoted, the article insists that foreknowledge makes no difference. Second, I said that I asked my mother to watch the video without telling her what was supposed to happen, so she actually had no foreknowledge.
[...] the visual (that lips “ga ga”
or not, then you are one among the exceptions, like the unapolegetic mathematician and his [...]
[...] to be an exception to all the people who have tried out the experiment. Most commentators on “The Unapolegetic Mathematician” vote that they hear either “da da”, thereby proving the McGurk Effect, or the [...]
Effect works for me as described.