Visual Influences on Perception of Speech and Nonspeech Vocal-Tract Events

We report four experiments designed to determine whether visual information affects judgments of acoustically-specified nonspeech events as well as speech events (the “McGurk effect”). Previous findings have shown only weak McGurk effects for nonspeech stimuli, whereas strong effects are found for c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language and speech 2006-03, Vol.49 (1), p.21-53
Main Authors: Brancazio, Lawrence, Best, Catherine T., Fowler, Carol A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustic Stimulation
African Languages
American English
Attention
Auditory Perception
Auditory Stimuli
Clicks
Comparative Analysis
Connecticut
Consonants
Cues
Distinctive Features (Language)
English
Evidence
Experiments
Humans
Illusions
Linguistics
Listening Comprehension
McGurk effect
Morphemes
North American English
Perceptual Masking
Phonemes
Phonetics
Phonology
Psychoacoustics
Psycholinguistics
Psychology of language
Sensory Integration
Sensory perception
Speech
Speech Acoustics
Speech perception
Speech Perception - physiology
Speech production and perception
Stimuli
Stops
Syllables
Undergraduate Students
Visual Perception
Visual Perception - physiology
Visual Stimuli
Vowels
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Summary:We report four experiments designed to determine whether visual information affects judgments of acoustically-specified nonspeech events as well as speech events (the “McGurk effect”). Previous findings have shown only weak McGurk effects for nonspeech stimuli, whereas strong effects are found for consonants. We used click sounds that serve as consonants in some African languages, but that are perceived as nonspeech by American English listeners. We found a significant McGurk effect for clicks presented in isolation that was much smaller than that found for stop-consonant-vowel syllables. In subsequent experiments, we found strong McGurk effects, comparable to those found for English syllables, for click-vowel syllables, and weak effects, comparable to those found for isolated clicks, for excised release bursts of stop consonants presented in isolation. We interpret these findings as evidence that the potential contributions of speech-specific processes on the McGurk effect are limited, and discuss the results in relation to current explanations for the McGurk effect.
ISSN:0023-8309
1756-6053
DOI:10.1177/00238309060490010301