The McGurk effect in infants

Abstract

In the McGurk effect, perceptual identification of auditory speech syllables is influenced by simultaneous presentation of discrepant visible speech syllables. This effect has been found in subjects of different ages and with various native language backgrounds. But no McGurk tests have been conducted with prelinguistic infants. In the present series of experiments, 5-month-old English-exposed infants were tested for the McGurk effect. Infants were first gaze-habituated to an audiovisual /va/. Two different dishabituation stimuli were then presented: audio /ba/-visual /va/ (perceived by adults as /va/), and audio /da/-visual /va/ (perceived by adults as /da/). The infants showed generalization from the audiovisual /va/ to the audio /ba/-visual /va/ stimulus but not to the audio /da/-visual /va/ stimulus. Follow-up experiments revealed that these generalization differences were not due to a general preference for the audio /da/-visual /va/ stimulus or to the auditory similarity of /ba/ to /va/ relative to /da/. These results suggest that the infants were visually influenced in the same way as English-speaking adults are visually influenced.

Phonetic Recalibration in Audiovisual Speech

“…Een aantal studies hebben aangetoond dat baby's al snel na de geboorte in staat zijn om het auditieve en visuele spraaksignaal te integreren in één fonetische waarneming (Desjardins & Werker, 2004;Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1982;Rosenblum et al, 1997). Baby's van vier maanden oud, die tegelijkertijd twee video's te zien krijgen van een spreker die een klinker uitspreekt, zijn in staat om het goede gezicht aan een auditief aangeboden klinker te koppelen (Kuhl & Meltzoff, 1982;Patterson & Werker, 1999) en zelfs baby's van twee maanden oud kunnen de correspondentie tussen auditieve en visuele spraak detecteren (Patterson & Werker, 2003).…”

The processing of audio-visual speech: empirical and neural bases

“…Infants who are not yet able to speak or respond to attentional instruction are sensitive to audio-visual fusions. From the age of six months or so, infants who have habituated to a 'McGurk' audiovisual 'da' (the stimulus comprises an auditory 'ba' dubbed to a visual 'ga') dishabituate when a congruent audio-visual 'ba' is played to them, and fail to respond with a dishabituation response when a 'real' audiovisual 'da', derived from a visual 'da' and an auditory 'da', is played to them (Burnham & Dodd (2004) and see also Rosenblum et al (1997)). Audio-visual speech processing capabilities are in place even before the child has useful speech.…”

Behavioral and Neural Foundations of Multisensory Face-Voice Perception in Infancy

“…For example, infants and adults alike are susceptible to the McGurk illusion (e.g., Burnham & Dodd, 2004;McGurk & MacDonald, 1976;Rosenblum, Schmuckler, & Johnson, 1997). Specifically, infants (and adults) commonly Intersensory Perception 12 perceive a unique or third speech event when one auditory speech sound is artificially synchronized with different visible speech movements (i.e., lip movements) (Burnham & Dodd, 2004;Rosenblum et al, 1997). In addition to integrating different face and voice speech events, as in the case of the McGurk illusion, infants' also unite auditory and visual speech events in the absence of spatial contiguity (e.g., Pons, Lewkowicz, Soto-Faraco, & Sebastian-Galles, 2009).…”