Mc Gurk: clever study

Kudo' s to Cognitive Daily: a great blog !!

We've discussed synesthesia many times before on Cognitive Daily -- it's the seemingly bizarre phenomenon when one stimulus (e.g. a sight or a sound) is experienced in multiple modalities (e.g. taste, vision, or colors). For example, a person might experience a particular smell whenever a given word or letter is seen or heard. Sometimes particular faces are associated with specific colors or auras. Synesthesia is relatively rare, but the people who experience it are genuine: their perceptions are consistent and replicable. But one question researchers haven't been able to nail down is exactly how synesthesia occurs. Consider the relatively common form of synesthesia, where colors are perceived along with words. One synesthete consistently sees the color green when she hears someone say "neat." Does the synesthetic experience occur when she first detects the word, or only after she understands its meaning? A team led by Gary Bargary has figured out a new way to test when a synesthetic experience occurs by relying on the McGurk Effect. In the McGurk effect, the word you "hear" someone saying changes depending on what you see. This movie gives a quick demonstration of the phenomenon: Read on....