I've been trying to figure out if there is a name for a certain phenomenon, but Google's turning up nothing.

There is something that happens in our brains that "corrects" audio and video synchronization, up to a point. Anyone who works in editing can tell you that you can move sound effects or dialogue to be slightly off its visual target. The brain will correct it and no one is the wiser.

Does this have a name? Or can you easily apply another theory to this one? Causality?

Dunno, reminds me of this though: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGurk_effect

that is regarding different phonemes, but the time is unaltered. What I am describing is same sound, altered time.

cool effect tho.

google "motor theory of speech perception" or " McGurk effect"

that's what little blue linked to as well. i'm looking for timing, not sound.

look up the "McGurk affect" aka motor theory of speech pecption on encarta, it's a p. cool affect

rofl

Hey slammy. While you're at it, look up the McGurk effect. You might want to check out the McGurk effect too, it's pretty interesting.

p.s. McGurk

Edited 1/8/2015 18:09:56

research on that topic has been done by :
Rutloff, 1997 Psychological Faculty of Rhein University Bonn
Heide, 2009 Technical University Berlin
Buckbesch, 2013 Technical University Berlin

Heide claims that the results of her work in respect of "tolerances for transmission time differences between the vision and sound components of a television signal" correspond mostly with the recommendation of the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) in the ITU-T Recommendation J.100 with the same (sub)title or the recommendation of the EBU (European Broadcasting Union).

According to EBU the audio asynchronity shouldnt be more than 40ms before or 60ms after the visual synchronisation point.
The ITU speaks of +20ms and -40ms.

For more details, look into the works of the scientists I listed. For example Heide also distinguished between Speech, Sounds and Music in her research.

i don't think that falls in psychology, more neuroscience perhaps.

but yeah, seems that you want to read more on the McGurk effect, it's a little broader then you seem to have assumed.

Usually you can notice innacuracies from around 60-100ms, but that fluctuates between people and their current state of mind. Some musicians refuse to play any midi keyboard with higher then 20ms lag. Similar to some quake players and their connection lag. The person triggering the sync is usually more aware of the discrepancy than if it's just being shown/heard. And like you mentioned i do believe that is because the brain is performing it's sensory fusion on the different inputs and recognizing patterns in synchronic elements, but it also knows (from years of evolution) that distance of sound and distance of vision don't always match even though they come from same source.

thanks all. myhand do you have any links?

I have a link for you

www.theMcGurkeffect.McGurk.net/McGurk