Video version of the Thatcher Effect

Forgetomori has a couple of video versions on interesting perceptual illusions: the Thatcher effect (above) and the McGurk effect.

• [Tweeker]

  [i]I thought the Thatcher effect was 2.5m unemployed and the destruction of the working classes… but I guess I’m still stuck in the 1980′s.[/i]

  The reason the effect works is because The Falklands are in the southern hemisphere.

• [PrometheusG]

  McGurk effect == fail

  I never heard daa from that guy, either. I head thaa, baa, gaa, aaa, but never daa the first round. The second round I mostly heard aaa, but heard baa a couple of times. He just looked like he was opening his mouth without sound, I didn’t imagine any sound coming out.

• [Anonymous]

  Him: “Notice anything strange about the way I look?”

  Me: “Yes. Your mouth and eyes look weird.”

  The illusion half-worked on me. He looked even weirder when he turned over.

• [chris]

  I heard aa aa baa baa …

  Which made me really want to listen to ABBA.

• [liatach]

  @#18

  /Win

• [Ohhhsnap]

  Anyone else get dizzy while watching?

• [Nur]

  That’s the oddest thing – I heard baa baa baa. Does that mean I listen better than I see? I hope so, it sounds like something to write on the CV.

  I dunno about you but all those sounds are produced using pretty incredibly similar lip movements with some tongue and vocal chord use to shape the sound – it’s extremely difficult to actually distinguish sounds from how the lips move, words are actually a bit easier because you’ve got some context.

  So basically it’s a test of who looked at the dude’s tongue.

• [Caroline]

  The first time I watched the McGurk effect, I heard the guy say “Ah ah [b]ah bah bah.” Like he started saying “ah,” and slowly shaded into “bah.” I actually thought the effect was going to be some illusion of the transformation from “ah” to “bah.” When I closed my eyes I heard him say “bah” the whole time. I couldn’t really tell what he was saying with the sound off.

  Then I rewound to the video’s beginning, and heard him say “bah” the whole time. Weird.

  I wonder if people who just heard “ah” have slight hearing damage? Isn’t failure to distinguish consonants a symptom of hearing damage?

• [lauradee]

  Hi all, we made this video for The Open University channel on YouTube. Great to see it appear here. If anyone wants to make their own version, video comment it to the channel. And if you want to know more, here’s the science:

  Vast amounts of information are conveyed by our faces – not just speech, but also nonverbal information – through our expressions. It’s also very important that we can tell the difference between people. Psychologists have suggested that our minds have, or learn, very specific abilities to process faces, their features and the information they convey.

  Now, this ability is ‘tuned’ to work best on upright faces (not surprisingly, as that’s the way we usually see them). So when a face is turned upside down some of these processes don’t work so well, especially the ones that tell us about the spatial relationships between the main parts of the face: the mouth, eyes and nose. So when the face is upside down – it’s as if these abilities get turned off and so we don’t spot the oddities.

  We know that very specific bits of our brains do this job – because people with prosopagnosia (where part of the brain is damaged) can’t spot the difference between the upside-down faces and the ones that are the right way up.

  There you have it!

• [InsertFingerHere]

  Gotta say… Many, many years ago, I went to the movies to see Species 2 , and for whatever reason, the 2nd reel was not wound properly on the reel, and it started upside down, playing backwards, as the camera was tracking around Peter Boyle’s head, and … the whole thing was trippy as hell. Got the money back , good thing.. it was a crappy flick.

  But I recall I was transfixed on the scene, half my brain saying this is wrong, the other half just going nuts trying to make sense of the images.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Many, many years ago, I went to the movies to see Species 2

    Did you really just admit to that?

• [fatuousplatitudes]

  OMG… I thought the Thatcher effect was 2.5m unemployed and the destruction of the working classes… but I guess I’m still stuck in the 1980′s.
  (UK joke; doesn’t cross the pond: sorry).

• [Jim O’Connell]

  For those of you with significant others, you can play around with something similar. Put your face directly above your partner’s, but upside-down. Kind of a “Facial 69″ in a way. Stare at their mouth and have them talk. It’s nearly impossible to keep from laughing.

• [Takuan]

  he had to, an alien brain slug was battened onto the side of his head.

• [dculberson]

  Of course he did; Henstridge demands it.

• [brightblue47]

  The McGurk effect didnt work for me either- i mostly heard “baa” but sometimes “aah”… trying to hear daa didn’t help with McGurk, but with their “McThatcher” mashup, I could hear the “va” if I thought about it. Odd.

• [Anonymous]

  I think that while obviously the illusion makes the face look weirder when it’s the right way up, you can also see the face looks weird upside down too. The eyes and mouth moving in the wrong direction for a start. But then I knew what the experiment was before I looked at it………

• [blueelm]

  McGurk vid was weird. I didn’t have the same response at all. Good thing I can hear, I guess.

• [JudgeDredd]

  I noticed the guys eyes immediately and only heard “ah” until he told me what to hear. Did these work for anyone other than Mark?

• [felixjawesome]

  SCIENCE! OMG.

• [SkullHyphy]

  I experienced neither of the illusions. Does that mean my brain doesn’t work right, or that it works better than expected? Or maybe I was paying close attention because I knew they were supposed to be illusions and they only work if they’re slightly unexpected?

• [dexdoomsday]

  I care because you do