The McGurk phenomenon in Italian listeners.

In the classic example of the McGurk effect, when subjects see a speaker say /ga/ and hear a simultaneous /ba/, they typically perceive /da/, a syllable that was not presented either acoustically, or visually. This phenomenon, although non-natural and recreated in laboratory investigations, has been studied in order to better understand how, where and when the central nervous system processes and integrates visual and auditory signals. Till now, it has been demonstrated for English, Spanish and German languages, while in Japanese and Chinese it seems weaker. Aim of this study was to evaluate the entity of the McGurk effect for the Italian language. Results obtained demonstrate a robust McGurk effect for the Italian language, which has never been described before. The phenomenon is highly significant when an auditory bilabial Consonant-Vowel is dubbed with a visual apico-dental or velar Consonant-Vowel. Results are discussed on the basis of the recent hypothesis regarding the bimodal perception.