The McGurk effect

A phenomenon that occurs when a speech sound does not match the shape of the lips producing it, as when the sound corresponding to the usual pronunciation of the word gay is dubbed on to a video image of a person uttering the word bay, causing the listener to hear a word intermediate between the two (day).

The effect shows that the visual channel conveys important information not just to deaf people but also to listeners with normal hearing. For those with minor hearing loss, speech reading can be a very valuable way to maximize the hearing they still do have. Also, this reveals more about why watching the mouth is so important in intense language learning.

The phenomenon is named after the Scottish psychologist Harry McGurk (1936-98) who co-authored the first article on it, entitled 'Hearing Lips and Seeing Voices' in the journal Nature in 1976.

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I'll see you when I get my new glasses...

Have a look.

 

The Explanation: 

 

Inattentional blindness, a phenomenon known as "the failure to notice an unexpected stimulus that is in one’s field of vision when other attention-demanding tasks are being performed." This phenomenon is classified as a psychological attentional error - and you'll be relieved to know -  not the result of visionary deficits. The main reason for this lack of attention is the overload of stimuli surrounding us; in order to be able to focus on the intended things, we learn to disregard many others and be unaware of the unattended stimuli. There have been a large number of experiments demonstrating that this phenomenon has a significant effect on people’s perception...and now this one with you.

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"What we see depends mainly on what we look for." ~ John Lubbock