CAT 2021 Question Paper | VARC Slot 1

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Question 17 : The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
McGurk and MacDonald (1976) reported a powerful multisensory illusion occurring with audio-visual speech. They recorded a voice articulating a consonant 'ba-ba-ba' and dubbed it with a face articulating another consonant 'ga-ga-ga'. Even though the acoustic speech signal was well recognized alone, it was heard as another consonant after dubbing with incongruent visual speech i.e., 'da-da-da'. The illusion, termed as the McGurk effect, has been replicated many times, and it has sparked an abundance of research. The reason for the great impact is that this is a striking demonstration of multisensory integration, where that auditory and visual information is merged into a unified, integrated percept.

Explanatory Answer

The paragraph given explains the McGurk effect“ the merging of auditory and visual information into a unified integrated percept. Where there is a mismatch of audio and video signals, the message perceived is completely different from either of the signals. Option D summarises the paragraph well.
Option A is incorrect, as it says that the 'acoustic speech signal is confusing and integration of the two is imperfect'. The integration of the signals is not imperfect and both speech and audio signals are perceived differently in case of a mismatch.
Option B is incorrect too, as there is no 'winning' signal.
What option C states is true, but it does not summarise the main idea of the paragraph.

The answer is 'Visual speech mismatched with auditory speech can result in the perception of an entirely different message: this illusion is known as the McGurk effect.'

Choice D is the correct answer.