← all facts
perception
You hear sounds differently based on lip movement.
In a 1976 study, participants reported hearing 'da' when a speaker’s mouth showed 'ga' but the audio played 'ba'.
This is the McGurk effect, which demonstrates that vision dominates audition when the two conflict. Your brain fuses conflicting sensory inputs into a single percept rather than admitting the disagreement. It suggests that language processing relies heavily on visual observation rather than sound alone.
You are rarely listening to what you think you are hearing.
Where this comes from
- Study
- McGurk and MacDonald, 1976, Nature
- What the check found
- The seminal 1976 McGurk and MacDonald paper in Nature did indeed report that pairing visual 'ga' with auditory 'ba' resulted in the perception of 'da'.
- Confidence
- Well replicated
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.