McGurk effect

Pretend you are in a noisy room with your mother-in-law. You would like to say to her that the new flowers on the desk are colorful. Hopefully she can't read your lips, because if she can, she could think you're saying "I love you". Bummer! This is the result of the so called McGurk effect. To fully explain this effect we’d have to get a bit scientific, so we’ll explain it in layman’s terms. Basically it boils down to thinking you’re hearing something, while something different is being said. You see someone talking to you, and judging from the way his/her mouth moves, you expect a certain sound. If the sound that you expect is not the same as what you hear (could be due to ambient noise), your mind will play tricks on you and come up with a new sound. So beware, ambient noise can really distort the message, and you might show your mother-in-law more love than you’d like.