ISCA Archive AVSP 1998
ISCA Archive AVSP 1998

The Influence of Quality of Information on the McGurk Effect

Eric Fixmer, Sarah Hawkins

Quality of information in the McGurk effect was manipulated by using auditory stimuli that spanned a wide range of intelligibility, and by adding auditory and/or visual noise. Questions were whether responses are affected by subjects' awareness of the variation in stimulus quality, and whether quality of information affects type as well as number of McGurk responses. Expt. 1 established the auditory intelligibility of 8 tokens of /aga/ from 4 speakers. In expt. 2 each /aga/ was presented simultaneously with a videod face saying /aba/ with and without visual and/or auditory noise. There were fewer McGurk responses with more visual noise, and more McGurk responses with more auditory noise, including more responses of /b/ alone rather than e.g. /bg/. Less intelligible auditory stimuli increased the number of McGurk responses when the second syllable was stressed. The data suggest that what the subject perceives depends on both the physical and relative quality of the stimuli, and the perceiver's judgement of their quality.