Categories
psychology

The McGurk Effect

Recently a Tik-tok video has been making the rounds that highlights a phenomena called the McGurk effect.

From Wikipedia:

“The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception. The illusion occurs when the auditory component of one sound is paired with the visual component of another sound, leading to the perception of a third sound.”

It stands to reason that this is what is happening when one is primed to listen to the backwards “backmasking lyrics” like the ones on my backmasking page.

How many of these can you hear?

  • 94
  • 49
  • iPhone
  • fortnight
  • nice one
  • night fall
  • throw a knife
  • eye for an eye

And here’s the explainer video put out by the BBC.

(via ATP)

Categories
Music psychology

Amazing Audio Illusion

Play this audio clip again after it finishes and hear it continue to “creep up”.

See Wikipedia’s entry on Shepard Tone for the full scoop.

A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard, is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the base pitch of the tone moving upwards or downwards, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.