Rethinking the McGurk effect as a perceptual illusion

Abstract

Visual speech cues play an important role in speech recognition, and the McGurk effect is a classic demonstration of this. In the original McGurk & Macdonald (Nature 264, 746–748 1976) experiment, 98% of participants reported an illusory “fusion” percept of /d/ when listening to the spoken syllable /b/ and watching the visual speech movements for /g/. However, more recent work shows that subject and task differences influence the proportion of fusion responses. In the current study, we varied task (forced-choice vs. open-ended), stimulus set (including /d/ exemplars vs. not), and data collection environment (lab vs. Mechanical Turk) to investigate the robustness of the McGurk effect. Across experiments, using the same stimuli to elicit the McGurk effect, we found fusion responses ranging from 10% to 60%, thus showing large variability in the likelihood of experiencing the McGurk effect across factors that are unrelated to the perceptual information provided by the stimuli. Rather than a robust perceptual illusion, we therefore argue that the McGurk effect exists only for some individuals under specific task situations. Significance: This series of studies re-evaluates the classic McGurk effect, which shows the relevance of visual cues on speech perception. We highlight the importance of taking into account subject variables and task differences, and challenge future researchers to think carefully about the perceptual basis of the McGurk effect, how it is defined, and what it can tell us about audiovisual integration in speech.