The McGurk Effect

For the next one to work, let it load fully before viewing. It is a movie of two teams playing a ball game. Watch it only once carefully and note how many passes are made by the team wearing white shirts. Scroll down for the answer

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Ok, I think there were thirteen or fourteen passes. But did you notice anything unusual, besides the ball game? Watch it again and see if you missed any strangeness going on. More examples here

Uh, the ape? Boo. Have you hugged your usurer today?

I counted fourteen or fifteen passes. I got kinda distracted by the guy in the costume showing up in the middle. My tohughts were along the lines of "counting...counting...I bet that guy's just supposed to distract you and make you lose count...Dammit! Lost count!"

The first one is unsettling, for the same reason optical illusions are unsettling: I hate the thought that my senses aren't being completely honest with me.

Here's a strange question - if there were, say, an alien that had a completely different visual structure than us, or maybe just much better vision, would they see cartoons as a series of many still images?

I counted 15, but one of the passes was made with someones back to the camera, so it was kinda hard to catch. I noticed the ape too, but since you told me to watch the people in white, I zoned in on the "White Ball" and kinda blocked everyone else.

As for the first movie, I noticed a diffrence immediately, its kinda neat. I guess I dont mind my senses going a bit buggy, aslong as I can still function "normally". Farnyr Shrubhugger
"...dang trees ....stupid rocks..."

Gah the first movie screwed me up. I heard da da da with my eyes open and ba ba gaga with my eyes closed. Then with my eyes open again I heard ba ba and with my eyes closed da da. My brain hurts..

And I got 15 too for the 2nd video, the guy and the girl are on the left side at one point, and the guy on the right passes to the girl on the left. What's not apparent is whether she caught it and passes it to the guy in front of her (blocking her in the camera) very quickly, or whether the guy in front of her just caught it without her passing it to her. Pyrocat Moonstalker
It's murder on the dance floor.. You better not steal the moves
Blackitty Pantheramoon 64th Assassin (Prexian, Retired)
Member of The Safehouse and Gamingforce Forums
Harry Potter Fanfics You know you want to.
A dagger in the dark is worth a thousand swords at dawn.

I had 13 but its possible I missed a pass when I said "WTF theres a gorilla"

Pyrocat, the actual count isn't the point - did you notice the weird occurance? Even if you noticed "something" did you see what it actually was and what he did? Watch it again =)

~Berj

Um, why did I get 21? Didn't see a gorilla either.

I was counting passes for both teams.

EDIT: Ok, 13 for the white team. I don't read directions well the first time. gnmish.gearbinder.ring.warden.sullon.zek
'Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest... Honestly.'Edited by: Gnmish Gearbinder at: 4/25/04 8:02 am

...the only 'occurance' was the gorilla? How could you NOT notice that? O_o

The point of the study was to demonstrate selective attention. If you're concentrating on one thing that's generally complicated, you don't have the mental "resources" to notice the Gorrilla. More often then not, people don't see the ape at all the first time they do the excercise.

For the record, people with normal cognative thinking will not see the ape (most of the time). Usually if you catch the ape mid-way through the movie then you just aren't as focused as a normal person !

PS: I am being very general and vague with the term "cognative thinking" ----------
"You there, fill it up with petroleum distillate, and re-vulcanize my tires, post-haste! Also, I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?" - Monty BurnsEdited by: Bondori Zafiro at: 4/25/04 10:18 am

didn't even see the gorilla the first time through.

the ba-ga-da thing is pretty cool.

I got 14 and one guy in a monkey suit walking up to the center and then walking past again. Possibly 15 passes but one of the black suit people was in the way so I didn't see if it was really a pass. Also who the heck is not going to notice a frigging guy in a monkey suit walking past?! It's not like that's a common thing to see.

fourteen, definitely 14

its a try to play on color, there is a black and white team. If you are told to watch white you sort of "block out" the black team, so you might, or might not see the guy in the suit. But they walk all around him, so i don't see how you can miss it.

I counted 27 exchanges of the ball between two people. 5 of them blocked out by the receiver having thier back to the camera. Fairy - Bastok
Rewo (Taru)
31 Blm/50 Brd/29 Whm/15 Thf/9 Mnk

the reason lots of people here are picking up on the ape is because of *drumroll* video games.

its been proven multiple times that gaming develops your awareness, especially in regards to perephrial perception, and the ability to keep track of multiple visual stimuli at the same time.

I counted 15

Quote:if there were, say, an alien that had a completely different visual structure than us, or maybe just much better vision, would they see cartoons as a series of many still images?



Actually, from what I've heard, insects see the world in more frames per second than us, so if they look at a TV it just looks like still images to them. Man, I bet insects think we're weird, staring at slide shows hour after hour- each picture looking nearly like the one before it.


Fattius Ribsticker
65 Deceiver of White Wind

If I may drop some linguistics on the first video Wotan....

The phoneme (sound) /b/ is a voiced bilabial phoneme. Bilabial meaning both lips come together to make the sound. Voiced meaning basically that your vocal cords are together, and the airstream causes them to vibrate. A voiceless bilabial phoneme is /p/ (air flows freely through the vocal cords). If you put your hand in front of your mouth when you say /p/, you feel a puff of air, but you don't when you say /b/.

The phoneme /d/ is an voiced alveolar phoneme, which means that your tongue forms the /d/ sound up against the ridge behind your top teeth (the alveolar ridge). A voiceless version of an alveolar phoneme would be the phoneme /t/. Try them with your hand in front of your mouth to see the difference between voiced and voiceless.

The guy therefore is making the /b/ sound without using his lips, but his vocal cords must still vibrate. Morvran McGuinness
Retired rogue of the North {Shanks}, Vallon Zek
The more you leave dead, the less you need to watch your backEdited by: Mordier at: 4/26/04 4:43 pm

Quote:The guy therefore is making the /b/ sound without using his lips

Occams Razor.
I just figured they took the video of him making one sound and dubbed on a soundtrack of the other sound.

yeah i'm pretty sure that's what they did, filming him saying "ga", so that you see his lips doing /g/ while they put an audio track of him (or anyone else for that matters) saying "ba".

The illusions comes from the fact that your eyes tell you the guy is doing a /g/ while you here a /b/, resulting in a /d/.

Gotta go read the article in Nature now, that's cool. scratch that, i didnt realize that the article was from 1973... but there is a helluva lot of article about that effect in Pubmed ! Edited by: Diziet Asahi at: 4/27/04 2:51 am

14 passes, also noticed gorilla suit first time around. This won't work on gamers sorry.