65th Annual STS (2005-2006)
Finalists
Jerrold Alexander Lieblich

NEW YORK
Jerrold Alexander Lieblich, 17, of East Setauket, performed a cognitive psychology study for his Intel Science Talent Search project in behavioral and social sciences. Jerry built his study around an audio-visual illusion called the McGurk effect, in which a subject seeing a person on video pronounce /gi/ while hearing the phoneme /bi/ dubbed over it will perceive /di/. His study tested if the perceived /di/ is processed in the same manner as a true /di/ by placing the illusory /di/ in a lexical context (within a word - e.g. armadillo, armagillo, armabillo). He found that subjects exposed to McGurk stimuli and those exposed to actual /d/ phonemes both had high confidence in the /d/s, demonstrating that even with the lexical context, the brain processes the McGurk /di/ in a different manner than a true /di/. The son of Dr. Lawrence Lieblich and Perri Fitterman, Jerry hopes to attend Princeton or Yale. As president of the Philosophy Club at Ward Melville High School, he led an effort to amend the school's censorship policy to permit greater access to research resources. The winner of numerous math and Latin awards, Jerry is a member of the Latin Honor Society and writes for the school paper.