Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Research Highlight
  • Published:

Sensory systems

Sight versus sound

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 5, page 168 (2004)Cite this article

Ventriloquism is a phenomenon whereby we inaccurately perceive a voice as emanating from a spatially displaced source; for example, from the lips of a ventriloquist's dummy rather than from those of the ventriloquist. The effect was originally thought to be the product of voice projection techniques perfected by the performer, but recent hypotheses have suggested that it results from the domination of hearing by vision.

Alais and Burr tested this assertion by having observers localize visual and audio stimuli — brief 'blobs' of light or 'clicks' of sound — in space. Unimodal thresholds were established by presenting these stimuli separately and asking observers to indicate which of the two stimuli appeared more to the left. Subsequently, blobs and clicks were presented simultaneously in one of two modes. In 'conflict' mode, blobs and clicks were spatially displaced from each other; in 'non-conflict' mode, the stimuli were equally displaced to the left or right of centre.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on SpringerLink
  • Instant access to the full article PDF.

USD 39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Alais, D. & Burr, D. The ventriloquist effect results from near-optimal bimodal integration. Curr. Biol. 14, 257–262 (2004)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

FURTHER READING

  1. Ernst, M. O. & Banks, M. S. Humans integrate visual and haptic information in a statistically optimal fashion. Nature 415, 429–433 (2002)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Suzanne Farley
    View author publications

    Search author on:PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Farley, S. Sight versus sound. Nat Rev Neurosci 5, 168 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1360

Download citation

  • Issue date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1360

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing