The McGurk effect is a compelling illusion in which humans auditorily perceive mismatched audiovisual speech as a completely different syllable. In this study evidences are provided that professional musicians are not subject to this illusion, possibly because of their finer auditory or attentional abilities. 80 healthy age-matched graduate students volunteered to the study. 40 were musicians of Brescia Luca Marenzio Conservatory of Music with at least 8-13 years of musical academic studies./la/,/da/,/ta/,/ga/,/ka/,/na/,/ba/,/pa/phonemes were presented to participants in audiovisual congruent and incongruent conditions, or in unimodal (only visual or only auditory) conditions while engaged in syllable recognition tasks. Overall musicians showed no significant McGurk effect for any of the phonemes. Controls showed a marked McGurk effect for several phonemes (including alveolar-nasal, velar-occlusive and bilabial ones). The results indicate that the early and intensive musical training might affect the way the auditory cortex process phonetic information.

Proverbio, A., Massetti, G., Rizzi, E., Zani, A. (2016). Skilled musicians are not subject to the McGurk effect. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, 6 [10.1038/srep30423].

Skilled musicians are not subject to the McGurk effect

PROVERBIO, ALICE MADO
Primo
;
Massetti, G;RIZZI, EZIA;ZANI, ALBERTO
2016

Abstract

The McGurk effect is a compelling illusion in which humans auditorily perceive mismatched audiovisual speech as a completely different syllable. In this study evidences are provided that professional musicians are not subject to this illusion, possibly because of their finer auditory or attentional abilities. 80 healthy age-matched graduate students volunteered to the study. 40 were musicians of Brescia Luca Marenzio Conservatory of Music with at least 8-13 years of musical academic studies./la/,/da/,/ta/,/ga/,/ka/,/na/,/ba/,/pa/phonemes were presented to participants in audiovisual congruent and incongruent conditions, or in unimodal (only visual or only auditory) conditions while engaged in syllable recognition tasks. Overall musicians showed no significant McGurk effect for any of the phonemes. Controls showed a marked McGurk effect for several phonemes (including alveolar-nasal, velar-occlusive and bilabial ones). The results indicate that the early and intensive musical training might affect the way the auditory cortex process phonetic information.
Articolo in rivista - Articolo scientifico
Multimodal perception, auditory, language, musicians, audiovisual speech-perception; superior temporal sulcus; musical expertise; auditory-cortex;interindividual differences; crossmodal binding; background-noise; corpus-callosum; visual speech; human brain
English
2016
6
30423
open
Proverbio, A., Massetti, G., Rizzi, E., Zani, A. (2016). Skilled musicians are not subject to the McGurk effect. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS, 6 [10.1038/srep30423].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/10281/130191
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