Cross-modal discrepancies in coarticulation and the integration of speech information: the McGurk effect with mismatched vowels.
Two experiments examined the impact of a discrepancy in vowel quality between the auditory and visual modalities on the perception of a syllable-initial consonant. One experiment examined the effect of such a discrepancy on the McGurk effect by cross-dubbing auditory /bi/ tokens onto visual /ga/ articulations (and vice versa). A discrepancy in vowel category significantly reduced the magnitude of the McGurk effect and changed the pattern of responses. A 2nd experiment investigated the effect of such a discrepancy on the speeded classification of the initial consonant. Mean reaction times to classify the tokens increased when the vowel information was discrepant between the 2 modalities but not when the vowel information was consistent. These experiments indicate that the perceptual system is sensitive to cross-modal discrepancies in the coarticulatory information between a consonant and its following vowel during phonetic perception.
D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D013060:Speech / Q000502:physiology*; D014705:Verbal Behavior / Q000502:physiology*