Having Autism is Like Watching a Poorly Dubbed Movie?? WTF?

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Yeah, I only saw one flash each time. I did notice that my brain almost reflexively wanted to count the double beeps as double flashes, but I did not actually see a double flash.

It's unclear what is the time between beeps in that video. It's also easier to see the illusion when the time interval is really short.

In two flash-one beep condition, ASD and NT perceived two flashes >50% of the time when the beeps were really close together, but NT dropped down to 10% when the beeps got far apart, while ASD dropped down to 25%. There was a twice as long time window in which ASD saw two flash illusion, indicating a longer period in which multisensory integration takes place, and the later study found that people with these longer temporal binding windows have reduced audiovisual integration of McGurk effect.

In the paper, there was bias towards seeing one flash in conditions in which two flashes were ackshuly shown, and it was pretty big bias in two flash-zero beep and two flash-one beep conditions. ASD and NT both missed one of the flashes half the time. They were only able to reliably see two flashes when there were two beeps.

Btw, for all these types of eggsperiments like flash and mcgurk, it's hard to tell what anyone would get over hundreds of trials of multiple conditions all mixed up, where some are test condition and others are different kinds of control conditions like ackshuly two flashes or ackshuly saying the combo sound.

I was so confused by this, because I always perceived it as "baa, baa, baa," even though the narrator said that I should be perceiving it as "faa, faa, faa," and in the previous video, I saw only one flash even with the two sounds, even when perceiving the video in my peripheral vision.

Oh, I figured it out all right - 25 years ago . Not that my perception was different but that I might have (the Asperger form of) autism. Typical that I should be years ahead of anyone else, and long before anyone was diagnosed with it. I did not want to be classed as 'disabled' though, and I feared the consequences that might happen if I was, so I stayed completely quiet about my thought and didn't breath a word of it to anyone. Then forgot about it.

I had another brief moment that 'I might be autistic' about ten years ago, when I did something really bizarre when playing football with the lads (of course I am the worst 'player' in the game and, eventually, was so bad I just kept out of the actual games but wanted to be involved and just went to watch). I could have sworn I detected a couple of them, slightly out of my slight, asking "is he autistic?". A sort of sixth sense perception by me.

I was, finally, diagnosed far more recently, after almost a series of chance referrals in our health service led to a referral to the autism specialists.

Interesting. I perceived it as 'faa, faa, faa' when the narrator said I should perceive it as that, and 'baa, baa, baa' when that was what they said it should be. I even looked across to the left half of the screen, then the right half, and back again, when the two faces were side by side on the screen - and the sound changed between 'faa' and 'baa' depending on which face I looked at! It may be because I am on the very mild side of the scale as regards my Asperger's as regards the effect of the 'facial expression' change having on the sound I hear, whereas perhaps your reading of facial expressions or mouth movements is more, for what of a better word and offence intended, impaired, and therefore the changed mouth movements don't affect what you hear, unlike they do with me. (That said, I wouldn't call my near-complete absence of ability to read body language a mild deficit at all. It's extremely severe.)

Despite being told he is only ever saying "baa", I still can't make those 'faas' sound like 'baas' even when I try to imagine they are always 'baas'. As for the flashed black disk, I saw one flash each time, although the two beeps tries to make you think there are two flashes: look at it carefully, as I no doubt am, and there is only one flash. I suspect the inattentive NT brain is more likely to perceive two flashes in relation to two beeps. I suspect my perception is influenced though because I know what the experiment is about, whereas under truly controlled conditions, and not being aware of the experiment or what I was looking for - or how many flashes there really were - I might well perceive two flashes with the two beeps when there is only one. Once you already know there is something you should be seeing or looking for, you concentrate on seeing it more than you would otherwise have done. Why it doesn't work, for me, with the McGurk effect I have no idea!

The McGurk effect does work for me.

That's actually a good thing--I have hearing difficulties, so watching people's lips in noisy conditions is actually helpful.

When I closed my eyes, I heard "baa."