"Mono-sensing" and Understanding Speech

I am profoundly deaf and use a cochlear implant, as well as a hearing aid. Listening to this video, I thought I heard "the, the, the..."

When I was speech reading (also known as lip reading), I could not catch much because the speaker's facial affect was blank and abnormal--as far as speech reading goes anyway. That noted, I guessed the speaker had to have been using a sound like /g/ since his lips, tongue, or teeth did not touch for a /b/, /v/, or /th/ sound.

I was surprised to learn that the actual sound coming from the speaker was "ba, ba, ba..." as I had pretty much bet that I would not be fooled.

Interesting video with a good point. Thanks for sharing Dora.

Posted by Elesia Ashkenazy on 02/12/2009 @ 06:19PM PT
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I do kind of lip read a little when I watch TV and movies, and when I turned off my hearing and just watched the video, I couldn't believe the person was actually mouthing "ga." The "a" sound seemed there but I didn't detect the proper throat/jaw stuff for the "g" sound. I also found the speakers eyes especially disturbing--I can usually manage eyeballs OK when they're on the screen, that that guy was pretty unbearable. I'm glad I'm not the only one who found the speaker strange!

Posted by Dora Raymaker on 02/12/2009 @ 06:37PM PT
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Interestingly, in all the McGurk Effect videos I've seen, I hear something that is neither "ba" or "ga"; in fact, it's not even a sound from English. It's similar to "ga", but pronounced much further back in the throat.

Apparently I really do fall back on lip-reading, since the sound is still much closer to "ga" than "ba"...

Posted by Cody Boisclair on 02/12/2009 @ 07:00PM PT
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I heard the ba sound with my eyes open and closed. I got nothing out of the video with no sound.

Posted by Jen Rosenblum on 02/12/2009 @ 08:47PM PT
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I just watched a few more videos of this on youtube. In the video with the hairy guy, I heard ga. In the Hear With Your Eyes video, I heard the da the time when I saw the person, and the be when I didn't see him. Is the person supposed to have anything to do with it?

Posted by Jen Rosenblum on 02/12/2009 @ 08:53PM PT
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Wow, interesting. I wasn't fooled by the illusion either! I had a hard time even seeing the illusion when it was explained, even. Mostly when I look at faces I think I tend to focus on the shapes of features, on colors of hair, of hair patterns, etc. And I also watch thing with subtitles on -- when I discovered that I was shocked at how much more "plot" I picked up on in movies, etc.!

Posted by Anne Corwin on 02/12/2009 @ 09:15PM PT
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All I heard whether I was looking or not, was 'aah' 'aah' etc. As far as I can tell, if it is 'ba' or 'ga' (as in, hearing any consonant with the 'aah'), that is only because he closes and opens his mouth while saying the 'aah' sound. And I can't even imagine how anyone comes to 'da'.

Posted by Norah vd Stel on 02/13/2009 @ 02:15AM PT
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I was hearing "ah bah ah bah bah bah bah". With the guy lips I was stuck on think he was saying "dah".

And I have a mild auditory processing disorder... mostly with filtering out background noise. Maybe I over compensate?

Posted by Erin Monk on 02/13/2009 @ 03:31PM PT
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I hear aah with my eyes open and ba with my eyes closed.

Posted by Holly Banfield on 02/15/2009 @ 07:15PM PT
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Although I understood the explanation intellectually, I was unable to observe any of the effect they were describing.

This is probably wy I have such great difficulty with unscripted and casual conversation.

Posted by William Brown on 07/04/2009 @ 10:12PM PT
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