SUSCEPTIBILITY TO AN AUDIO-VISUAL SPEECH ILLUSION IN OLDER AND YOUNGER ADULTS

Authors

  • Annalisa Setti
  • Kate E. Burkel
  • Rose Anne Kenny
  • Fiona N. Newell

Abstract

In the present work we investigated older and younger control participants’ susceptibility toan audio-visual speech illusion known as the McGurk effect that occurs when an incongruentphoneme [|ba|] and viseme [ga] are perceived as a new fused percept [‘da’]. We hypothesizedthat if older persons integrate information from different senses more than younger, theirsusceptibility to the illusion should be higher. The results confirmed this hypothesis. Wesuggest that difficulty in focusing on one channel (audition) while simultaneously perceivinginputs from other channels (vision) is the reason of this enhanced integration.

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