"Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices"

Paper Summary:

This paper presents an overview of the journal article "Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices" by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald which was published in 1976. This was a groundbreaking study in the subject of verbal communication, that examined the ways in which verbal communication relies on not only auditory input, but visual input as well. The paper shows that this went against the common belief that verbal communication uses sound alone.

Outline:
Presentation
Discussion Questions
Works Cited

From the Paper:

"One of the most interesting things revealed about verbal communication during this study is related to the different error rates among the different age groups. During the audio-only portion, preschool children had the highest error percentage, reporting the incorrect syllable nine percent of the time, while older children and adults were correct almost all of the time. However, when presented with conflicting auditory and visual input, the preschool children and school-age children had a much lower error rate than the adults."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Intel. (2003) Audio-Visual Speech Recognition Open Source Software Release. Intel Technology & Research. Archived online at http://www.intel.com/technology/computing/sw04034.htm
• McGurk, H. & McDonald, J. (1976, December) Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices. Nature. Vol 264, 746-48.
• Sanders, B. (2001, February 9) Reading Lips for Speech Recognition. University of Rochester. Archived online at http://www.cs.rochester.edu/~sanders/papers/speech_rec_project.ps.

More papers on "Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices":

• Book Review # 99115 : "In Seeing Voices"
• Research Paper # 106748 : "Hearing Loss and Maternal Bonding"
• Essay # 7345 : "Treatment for Cleft Lips and Palate"

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