That is, Yul Brynner minus ears and with a sliver of black for eyelashes. The head's frame consists of multiple triangles whose corners move to make the lips of Baldy pucker, his eyebrows raise, and his chin and other features change. On top of this frame, the computer can slap on a layer of skin molded to fit the head like a piece of shrink-wrap. The end result not only looks human, but speaks in a clearly understandable, if somewhat colorless, voice when words are fed to it on a keyboard. Baldy can, and this skill has provided Massaro with the key to dissecting how we handle the minute details of speech.
Oral languages consist of sounds joined together in ways specified by grammar rules.
Massaro has found that the right combination of these sounds and facial movements made by Baldy during speech unmask the rules we use to understand spoken language. From these types of studies, Massaro concluded that visual speech and auditory speech information are both analyzed in the brain to come up with an interpretation about what was said. The human tendency to combine both types of speech information, known as the McGurk effect , occurs even when Baldy utters and mouths very dissimilar words. Although viewers hear the parts that are completely different as verbal garbage, they try to come up with meaningful words from the mix of visible and auditory speech. Bill Brawner and others with a hearing loss know how important sight is in interpreting what people say.