PURPOSE: Prior studies (e.g., Nath & Beauchamp, 2012) report large individual variability in the extent to which participants are susceptible to the McGurk effect, a prominent audiovisual (AV) speech illusion. The current study evaluated whether susceptibility to the McGurk effect (MGS) is related to lipreading skill and whether multiple measures of MGS that have been used previously are correlated. In addition, it evaluated the test-retest reliability of individual differences in MGS. METHOD: Seventy-three college-age participants completed 2 tasks measuring MGS and 3 measures of lipreading skill. Fifty-eight participants returned for a 2nd session (approximately 2 months later) in which MGS was tested again. RESULTS: The current study demonstrated that MGS shows high test-retest reliability and is correlated with some measures of lipreading skill. In addition, susceptibility measures derived from identification tasks were moderately related to the ability to detect instances of AV incongruity. CONCLUSIONS: Although MGS is often cited as a demonstration of AV integration, the results suggest that perceiving the illusion depends in part on individual differences in lipreading skill and detecting AV incongruity. Therefore, individual differences in susceptibility to the illusion are not solely attributable to individual differences in AV integration ability.
PURPOSE: Prior studies (e.g., Nath & Beauchamp, 2012) report large individual variability in the extent to which participants are susceptible to the McGurk effect, a prominent audiovisual (AV) speech illusion. The current study evaluated whether susceptibility to the McGurk effect (MGS) is related to lipreading skill and whether multiple measures of MGS that have been used previously are correlated. In addition, it evaluated the test-retest reliability of individual differences in MGS. METHOD: Seventy-three college-age participants completed 2 tasks measuring MGS and 3 measures of lipreading skill. Fifty-eight participants returned for a 2nd session (approximately 2 months later) in which MGS was tested again. RESULTS: The current study demonstrated that MGS shows high test-retest reliability and is correlated with some measures of lipreading skill. In addition, susceptibility measures derived from identification tasks were moderately related to the ability to detect instances of AV incongruity. CONCLUSIONS: Although MGS is often cited as a demonstration of AV integration, the results suggest that perceiving the illusion depends in part on individual differences in lipreading skill and detecting AV incongruity. Therefore, individual differences in susceptibility to the illusion are not solely attributable to individual differences in AV integration ability.
Authors: John F Magnotti; Debshila Basu Mallick; Guo Feng; Bin Zhou; Wen Zhou; Michael S Beauchamp Journal: Exp Brain Res Date: 2015-06-04 Impact factor: 1.972