ABSTRACT
Why does the ventriloquist's voice seem to come from the dummy? The simple answer is that the sound is 'captured' by the sight of the moving lips. Visual capture of this type is the usual outcome of conflict between vision and any other type of information, either perceptual or cognitive. Generally, of course, there is no conflict between the various sorts of information we receive, for instance a coin looks and feels (and is) circular. It is possible, however, to give conflicting information, usually by manipulating the visual image, although this is not always necessary. Probably the best-known example of the effect we are considering did not in fact involve distortion. The 'visual cliff offers the choice of moving on to a sheet of glass with a textured surface just below it, or a similar sheet with a textured surface well below it. Young human and other animals avoid the 'deep' side of the cliff, despite the fact that they can feel that there is a firm sheet of glass over the 'deep' side. This clearly demonstrates the dominance of the visual information over the haptic sense (a combination of touch and information from the joints and muscles) even in infants.
