SAGE Journal Articles

Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.

SAGE Journal User Guide

Article 1: Nicholls, M. E. R., Searle, D. A., & Bradshaw, J. L. (2004). Read my lips: asymmetries in the visual expression and perception of speech revealed through the McGurk effect. Psychological Science, 15(2), 138-141. doi: 10.1111/j.0963-7214.2004.01502011.x

  • An empirical study using the McGurk effect to show that for speech perception we perceive more information from mouth movements on (what we think is) the right side of the face compared to the left. This also reflects left hemisphere dominance for speech articulation.

Discussion Questions

  1. Explain the classic McGurk effect. Define what a McGurk error is in this article.
  2. List the three main conditions in the experiment, and describe the pattern of McGurk errors made for the normal face orientation. Did this pattern change when the faces were flipped to their mirror image (right appeared on the left)? How so? 
  3. Do you think that our bias to attend to the right side of someone’s face when they are speaking is a learned behavior or do you think it is innate? Why do you think so, and can you think of a way you might be able to test your prediction?

Article 2: Johnsrude, I. S., Mackey, A., Hakyemez, H., Alexander, E., Trang, H. P., & Carlyon, R. P. (2013). Swinging at a cocktail party: voice familiarity aids speech perception in the presence of a competing voice. Psychological Science, 24(10), 1995-2004. doi: 10.1177/0956797613482467

  • An empirical study examining whether the familiarity of a voice can aid tracking one of two speakers’ messages, and how this effect may vary with the perceiver’s age.

Discussion Questions

  1. What was the participant’s task in this experiment? Describe what the coordinate-response-measure is, and the three conditions used to compare this measure.  How is this like being at a cocktail party, or a coffee shop?
  2. How do you think hearing a familiar voice benefited sound segregation (sequential organization) and being able to keep the two voices more separate during speech perception? How does age of the participants contribute to your explanation?