How can the McGurk bring you mindfulness into your teams calls ?

12 May

What is the McGurk Effect?

The McGurk effect is a perceptual phenomenon which happens when a person perceives that the movement of another individual’s lips do not match up with what that individual is actually saying.

This is an effect that was discovered by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald, in 1976. It’ s an illusion whereby someone is asked to watch a video of lip movements alongside listening to sounds uttered, apparently by the same person whose lip movements one is watching. If the lip movements and the sounds do not match, for example, if the lip movements indicate a “ba-ba” sound, whereas the auditory information is that of “ga-ga”. One typically experiences an illusory third sound “da-da”. McGurk and MacDonald hypothesise that the effect is because the brain is trying to make a “best guess”, given the information that is coming from different senses is contradictory.

Why lip reading is important?

Since being introduced to this illusion concept, it felt like it really resonated to me personally when relating to both mask wearing and online conference calls. Until the world put themselves into masks, thus hiding their lips, I’ve struggled to hear people and have come to realise just how much I in fact must read the lips of a person to understand what they are saying. But this doesn’t just stop at in person reading lips, I’ve been increasingly noticing just how hard online meetings can be for understanding people. Whilst team calls are here to stay, it doesn’t stop us in the workforce to realise that people need to be able to read your lips correctly to understand exactly what is being said.

What is the Mcgurk Effect How Covid-19 Masks Hinder Communication

So how can organisations take this proven McGurk effect and encourage their colleagues to be more mindful when it comes to online meetings?

Online technologies such as Msft Teams, Google hangouts and Zoom have accessibility features enabled within their software. This means that attendees of any meetings online can switch on the live captions into their calls.

This brilliant little feature enables you and your colleagues to ensure that no ones words are missed, misheard or misunderstood, and for our colleagues speaking their second languages, this should really support their individual needs within technology. Remember: Technology should always work for the individuals needs!