The McGurk effect in self-recognition of people with schizophrenia

The McGurk effect is a robust illusion phenomenon in the perception of speech; however, there is little research on its demonstration in nonverbal domains. Thus, we tested for the McGurk effect in the context of self-recognition. We presented a group of people with schizophrenia and a control group of people without mental illnesses, with 2 videos accompanied by a soundtrack featuring different identity information. The first video had a matched face and voice; the other featured conflicting face–voice information. The participants judged if the voice in the video was their own or someone else’s. The results show there was a robust McGurk effect in self-recognition, which was stronger among participants with schizophrenia because of the influence of self-disorder. Further, people with schizophrenia were less accurate in voice self-recognition when there was conflicting face–voice identity information. Thus, presenting audiovisual-consistent information is conducive to information processing for people with schizophrenia.