title: What you see isn't always what you get: Auditory word signals trump consciously perceived words in lexical access.
abstract: Human speech perception often includes both an auditory and visual component. A conflict in these signals can result in the McGurk illusion, in which the listener perceives a fusion of the two streams, implying that information from both has been integrated. We report two experiments investigating whether auditory-visual integration of speech occurs before or after lexical access, and whether the visual signal influences lexical access at all. Subjects were presented with McGurk or Congruent primes and performed a lexical decision task on related or unrelated targets. Although subjects perceived the McGurk illusion, McGurk and Congruent primes with matching real-word auditory signals equivalently primed targets that were semantically related to the auditory signal, but not targets related to the McGurk percept. We conclude that the time course of auditory-visual integration is dependent on the lexicality of the auditory and visual input signals, and that listeners can lexically access one word and yet consciously perceive another.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, United States. Electronic address: rostrand@cogsci.ucsd.edu.
authors.forename: Rachel
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ostrand
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, United States.
authors.forename: Sheila E
authors.initials: SE
authors.lastname: Blumstein
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of California, San Diego, United States.
authors.forename: Victor S
authors.initials: VS
authors.lastname: Ferreira
authors.affiliation: Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences, Brown University, United States.
authors.forename: James L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Morgan
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation / Q000379:methods*; D010865:Pilot Projects; D011897:Random Allocation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D013067:Speech Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Auditory–visual integration; Lexical access; McGurk effect; Multisensory perception