Warren J. Dew
Forum Master
That's only an inch or two more mismatch than Marcus & Karen Hilton, whom a lot of people thought were a really good match.
All Corona related issues
- Thread starter ProgressNotPerfection
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ProgressNotPerfection
Forum Master
Warning: this post doesn’t really have a point. It’s just a blog entry based on a recent observation.
Here’s something I have learned about myself, from partner dancing while wearing masks: I am a lip reader (though I have no known hearing impairment). The last couple months have been challenging for me in that regard. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out why I had to say “what?” so often, and why I kept asking Pro to turn down the music, and why I have to listen repeatedly to portions of my recorded lessons in order to understand something. Then it finally hit me this week: I’m constantly watching his mouth when he speaks, but all I can see is his mask. Without being able to see his mouth, I have to prioritize aural input over visual input. And that is made more difficult by the muffling effects of the mask on his voice, and the very loud background music, and the very loud instructions/conversations taking place between other teachers & students, especially in an acoustically-challenged ballroom.
Once I made the connection, I started noticing it all the time - I am a lip reader! With everyone - even tv & movie actors. I don’t mean a true lip reader* as in, “I can understand what someone says just by reading their lips even when there is no sound.” It’s more like, “I can more quickly & easily understand what someone says when I’m able to watch their mouth when they speak.”**
*I’mgetting on a soapbox going on the record here with my disapproval of the term “lip reader.” The lips are not the only things used in speaking. Equally important are the tongue, teeth, hard palate, etc., & how all of those are combined. In other words, bilabial is not enough - we must also have labiodental, interdental, alveolar, palatoalveolar, palatal, etc.
http://www.speechlanguage-resources.com/speech-sound-structures.html
The lips are by no means the main focus when one relies on watching a speaker’s mouth in order to absorb meaning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-lip-reading.html
**Wow...look at me embracing modernity by using the plural “they” & “their” to refer to a singular “someone.”
P.S. I’m still delighted to have private dance lessons, even with masks.
Here’s something I have learned about myself, from partner dancing while wearing masks: I am a lip reader (though I have no known hearing impairment). The last couple months have been challenging for me in that regard. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out why I had to say “what?” so often, and why I kept asking Pro to turn down the music, and why I have to listen repeatedly to portions of my recorded lessons in order to understand something. Then it finally hit me this week: I’m constantly watching his mouth when he speaks, but all I can see is his mask. Without being able to see his mouth, I have to prioritize aural input over visual input. And that is made more difficult by the muffling effects of the mask on his voice, and the very loud background music, and the very loud instructions/conversations taking place between other teachers & students, especially in an acoustically-challenged ballroom.
Once I made the connection, I started noticing it all the time - I am a lip reader! With everyone - even tv & movie actors. I don’t mean a true lip reader* as in, “I can understand what someone says just by reading their lips even when there is no sound.” It’s more like, “I can more quickly & easily understand what someone says when I’m able to watch their mouth when they speak.”**
*I’m
http://www.speechlanguage-resources.com/speech-sound-structures.html
The lips are by no means the main focus when one relies on watching a speaker’s mouth in order to absorb meaning.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-lip-reading.html
**Wow...look at me embracing modernity by using the plural “they” & “their” to refer to a singular “someone.”
P.S. I’m still delighted to have private dance lessons, even with masks.
@ProgressNotPerfection Literally same here. Every word of that post applies to me as well. I've been aware of this for a long time about myself, mainly because I struggle with eye contact and it's something you can sort of hide because people often can't tell that you are looking at their mouth and not their eyes. And yes, masks exacerbate the problem. (Side note: there is a hearing impaired couple at my studio - he can hear the beat, she cannot and relies on lip reading, so this really is a challenge for her).
Also.... because of this, it drives me ABSOLUTELY CRAZY when I'm watching TV and the sound and video are out of sync, so people's mouths are not moving in time with what they are saying. This seems to happen more and more in the digital TV world too. I have changed the channel or picked a different show on numerous occasions because I seriously can't stand it.
I've also noticed that masks are inhibiting my habit of occasionally taking a quick peek at my partner's feet if I get lost . Cue lectures about connection... please save those for later. (For those who raised eyebrows about that, I do a boatload of social dancing, and I'm literally talking a micro-second glance - I'm going to dispense with the false modesty on this one, I'm quick at getting back on the train after that). I'm referring especially to parties - which is where this has become evident the last couple weeks - where the skill set at hand is flexibility, receptiveness, and ability to adjust to many different leads and repertoires and surprises in general. You never know what's coming, or sometimes what's happening, and you've got to use all the tools at your disposal, including visual.
Also.... because of this, it drives me ABSOLUTELY CRAZY when I'm watching TV and the sound and video are out of sync, so people's mouths are not moving in time with what they are saying. This seems to happen more and more in the digital TV world too. I have changed the channel or picked a different show on numerous occasions because I seriously can't stand it.
I've also noticed that masks are inhibiting my habit of occasionally taking a quick peek at my partner's feet if I get lost . Cue lectures about connection... please save those for later. (For those who raised eyebrows about that, I do a boatload of social dancing, and I'm literally talking a micro-second glance - I'm going to dispense with the false modesty on this one, I'm quick at getting back on the train after that). I'm referring especially to parties - which is where this has become evident the last couple weeks - where the skill set at hand is flexibility, receptiveness, and ability to adjust to many different leads and repertoires and surprises in general. You never know what's coming, or sometimes what's happening, and you've got to use all the tools at your disposal, including visual.
Virtually everyone is an unconscious lip reader at the level of using facial features to help recognize the speech. See the McGurk effect, where showing someone the video of a person saying one thing with the sound of that person saying something else causes the hearer to perceive yet a third thing.
ProgressNotPerfection
Forum Master
What the heck??? I heard “ba ba ba” every time. I never heard “da da da.” And when the sound was off, the narrator said the speaker’s lips were saying “ga ga ga.” Huh??? It didn’t look that way to me - his lips met at the start of each sound, like they do with the letters b, p, and m. The g sound is produced completely differently, with tongue and teeth, nothing to do with lips.
My lack of susceptibility to the McGurk effect seems inconsistent with my need to watch someone’s mouth when they are speaking. I wonder what this means.
raindance
Forum Master
I think it means you should get your hearing tested by a qualified audiologist. Hearing might not be an issue for you at all ... but it might. And if it is, the sooner it's addressed, the better. (FWIW, most people with acquired hearing loss don't think they have hearing loss.)
I also heard "ba ba ba" when I watched with sound but I thought... weird what's his mouth doing? It felt a little like watching dubbed films, but the disconnect was not as bad.
I heard "ba ba ba" when I closed my eyes.
He was saying "ba ba ba", so I heard the right sound when I listened.
I could see ga ga ga when there was no voice. That what his mouth evidently was doing.
The thing is-- I knew this was a listening test/ watching test before I started. So perhaps that warning made me not hear the "da da da" which most people hear.
I heard "ba ba ba" when I closed my eyes.
He was saying "ba ba ba", so I heard the right sound when I listened.
I could see ga ga ga when there was no voice. That what his mouth evidently was doing.
The thing is-- I knew this was a listening test/ watching test before I started. So perhaps that warning made me not hear the "da da da" which most people hear.
Warren J. Dew
Forum Master
I think I'm one of the rare exceptions. My first professional job involved a lot of technical telephone conversations, and they were just as good as in person conversations as far as I was concerned; I was surprised when I found out others didn't feel that way. When I have trouble hearing someone, I turn my ear toward them which turns my eyes away.
I heard "aa aa aa" with both eyes open and eyes closed on the video. After being told it was "ba ba ba" I listened again with eyes closed, trying to hear the "b", and after a few repetitions, I could hear it, and continued hearing it afterwards with both eyes open and closed. Without sound, it still looks like "aa aa aa" - or like a fish silently opening and closing its mouth - so obviously I'm missing the subtle cues that might distinguish between consonants.
The McGurk effect is not getting a very good batting average here.
ProgressNotPerfection
Forum Master
Actually, that’s one of the striking things about the McGurk effect: knowing it’s a test, knowing what to expect, doesn't change the results.
“The McGurk effect is very robust; that is, knowledge about it seems to have little effect on one's perception of it. This is different from certain optical illusions, which break down once one 'sees through' them. Some people, including those that have been researching the phenomenon for more than twenty years, experience the effect even when they are aware that it is taking place.[8][10]”
ProgressNotPerfection
Forum Master
All of this (as we discussed, lol). And also the fish mouth thing when silent.
We are apparently an extraordinary collection of people here.
The lack of replicability here has a fairly simple explanation: acoustics.
First of all, we're watching a video on YouTube. Even if the video was uploaded from a lossless file, it isn't delivered that way. YouTube is optimized for video much more than sound, and will drop the quality even further than usual if the connection is slow.
Second, we're listening to the sounds on various speakers. Different speakers have different profiles and "sweet spots" in the frequency band, which is why every good sound system has multiple speakers. Basic PC and phone hardware do not. We are literally hearing different things from our devices!
Third, the clip used in the video is incredibly low quality in the first place. It has all the characteristics of a file that has been compressed and decompressed. It is missing significant audio data. When I listen with my best set of speakers and with YouTube providing the highest possible quality, it seems to me that some of the key low frequencies are noticeably clipped.
First of all, we're watching a video on YouTube. Even if the video was uploaded from a lossless file, it isn't delivered that way. YouTube is optimized for video much more than sound, and will drop the quality even further than usual if the connection is slow.
Second, we're listening to the sounds on various speakers. Different speakers have different profiles and "sweet spots" in the frequency band, which is why every good sound system has multiple speakers. Basic PC and phone hardware do not. We are literally hearing different things from our devices!
Third, the clip used in the video is incredibly low quality in the first place. It has all the characteristics of a file that has been compressed and decompressed. It is missing significant audio data. When I listen with my best set of speakers and with YouTube providing the highest possible quality, it seems to me that some of the key low frequencies are noticeably clipped.
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If I'm understanding the synopsis of the theory that others are posting, it seems like poorer acoustics should enhance the effect, since they would cause us to shift priority to our eyes to interpret.
I would be surprised if YouTube went too cheap on audio data rate in general. Audio takes an order of magnitude less bandwidth than video:
YouTube recommended upload encoding settings - YouTube Help
These features are only available to partners who use YouTube Studio Content Manager. Below are recommended upload encoding settings for your videos on YouTube. Container: MP4
support.google.com
Plus, music is a very significant use on the platform.
With that said, I agree that the lack of quality on that particular video struck me as well.
I wonder if we're all retrained by this age of online video with poor A/V sync and quality. OTOH, A/V sync was certainly pretty bad in other media forms at other times.
It would be interesting if there was an age breakdown in effect strength. (I heard "ba ba ba" all the time as well)