Harry McGurk and the McGurk Effect

A significant part of the history of auditory-visual speech processing is the discovery of the way in which auditory and visual speech components, when in conflict, can give rise to an emergent percept. Not many of the present-day young auditory-visual speech researchers know about the history of this finding. Early this year the organisers of AVSP’98 contacted the Australian Institute of Family Studies in Melbourne, Australia, to ask its Director, Harry McGurk, to talk at AVSP’98. Unfortunately Harry died in April this year and so was unable to meet and talk to the band of researchers now working in the area of auditory-visual speech processing. However, we still wanted to inform people about the origins of this effect, and so with the kind assistance of his daughter, Rhona McGurk, we publish here for the first time Harry’s inaugural lecture as Professor of Psychology at the University of Surrey. This tells of his general orientation to developmental psychology, and his discovery of the McGurk effect. Here I will give you a little extra information some historical background before and since the discovery; and Harry’s reaction to the discovery.