It does not. The McGurk effect is a cross modal illusion, which happens when one of your senses “hack” another. Speech is cross modal, hence the illusion, it works very well with anything visual/auditory and in theory it should with other senses (less obvious though). Here is a famous non speech example. In the case of the McGurk, visual information is processed more rapidly, which triggers an oscillatory response from the visual area. The auditory information does the same in auditory cortex. At some point, both are supposed to be integrated into one big coherent audiovisual perception, which is speech. But since the auditory information is lagging, if the visual information is slightly different, it will shift the oscillatory response toward the perception matching the visual information.
Source: I’m a neuroscientist and I worked on the McGurk effect.
synaptome t1_j8af3a8 wrote
Reply to Do audiovisual illusions like McGurk Effect only apply to speech? by knowledgeisnone
It does not. The McGurk effect is a cross modal illusion, which happens when one of your senses “hack” another. Speech is cross modal, hence the illusion, it works very well with anything visual/auditory and in theory it should with other senses (less obvious though). Here is a famous non speech example. In the case of the McGurk, visual information is processed more rapidly, which triggers an oscillatory response from the visual area. The auditory information does the same in auditory cortex. At some point, both are supposed to be integrated into one big coherent audiovisual perception, which is speech. But since the auditory information is lagging, if the visual information is slightly different, it will shift the oscillatory response toward the perception matching the visual information.
Source: I’m a neuroscientist and I worked on the McGurk effect.