Extraordinary claims. Ordinary investigations.

The McThatcher effect

February 23rd, 2009 by Mori

What happens when you combine two of the most interesting illusions? Above you can watch a video demonstration of the Thatcher effect. And below, the McGurk effect:

So, combine the two and you will have… the McThatcher effect:

mcthatcher 

[via the most excellent cgr v2.0]

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Posted in Science | 14 comments

14 Comments so far

  1. Boing Boing February 24th, 2009 5:11 pm

    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…….

  2. Classic Optical Illusions on Video | VizWorld.com February 24th, 2009 6:05 pm

    [...] The McThatcher effect | forgetomori. No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post) Share and Enjoy: [...]

  3. » Use your Perceptual Illusions… February 24th, 2009 6:23 pm

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

  4. Esoth February 24th, 2009 6:31 pm

    Strange. . . with the McGuirk Effect, first last and always, sound and sight, sound only and then sight only the guy was saying “Ahh, ahh, ahh” each time. What does that mean?

  5. Bob T February 24th, 2009 9:29 pm

    I’m with you, Esoth. I heard it the same way.

  6. Motobecane February 24th, 2009 9:43 pm

    I’m with you Esoth. All i heard through every thing was just the vowel sound–”ahh, ahhh”. Maybe we’re brain damaged.

  7. unicorn rider February 25th, 2009 12:02 am

    ditto…I heard and saw the same thing all three times

  8. Noddy93 February 25th, 2009 12:19 am

    it seems that there are quite a few of us “ahh” folk.

  9. Sharon February 25th, 2009 12:57 am

    I heard Ba visual+audio, and audio only. Visual only, I thought he was saying “Tom”.

    For those who only heard Ahh, maybe your sound is too low and you were missing the consonant.

  10. Sharon February 25th, 2009 1:02 am

    Oh, and for the combined effect, I heard VA VA VA FA BA most of the time. lol I wonder if much of what you hear depends on regional accents.

  11. Clayton February 25th, 2009 9:42 am

    Yep definitely saying ahh ahh ahh

  12. jeremy February 25th, 2009 11:45 am

    baa baa baa every time. eyes open or closed. Am I weird because I didn’t fall for the illusion? Maybe the result of too much misspent time with Sheep?

  13. Laura February 26th, 2009 8:32 am

    Love this. I also got ba ba ba! We created the Thatcher effect video for The Open University YouTube channel. Here’s the science for anyone who wants to know more:

    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.

  14. Martin December 18th, 2009 1:37 pm

    But I heard BA BA BA? What does that mean? :O

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