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Conference hydra::dejavu

Title:Psychic Phenomena
Notice:Please read note 1.0-1.* before writing
Moderator:JARETH::PAINTER
Created:Wed Jan 22 1986
Last Modified:Tue May 27 1997
Last Successful Update:Fri Jun 06 1997
Number of topics:2143
Total number of notes:41773

1327.0. "Reverse speaking on Larry King" by BTOVT::CAMHI_K () Thu Aug 02 1990 16:48

    I saw an interesting interview on Larry King last night.  I missed the
    beginning but one of the guests was talking about something I think he
    referred to as "reverse speech."  This phenomenon which he has been
    studying is one in which we verbally communicate two messages at the
    same time.  One is the normal, forward message we hear.  The other is a
    subconscious message produced by the right side of the brain and
    actually communicated backwards.  He said that we do this regularly,
    particularly under stress.  
    
    He played two examples.  The first was the announcer broadcasting from
    the parade at which JFK was shot.  Immediately after the shooting he
    was saying something forwards like that Kennedy was shot.  When that
    same tape is played in reverse, he was saying something like "look out,
    keep your head up,..."  This message was pretty clearly articulated.
    
    The other example was Paul McCartney (sp?) in Wings singing "Band on
    the Run" in the early 70's.  Forwards he sang "band on the run..."  BUT
    BACKWARDS... he was saying "Marajuana, Marajuana, they're coming after
    us" or something along these lines.  This was considered particularly
    significant given the timeframe of the song.  This is not a subliminal
    message intentionally added to the tape--it appears to be a different,
    subconscious phenomena.
    
    Any comments on this?
    
    
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1327.1Questionable.CADSYS::COOPERTopher CooperThu Aug 02 1990 19:2221
    Willing to bet that it takes "special processing" to get the backwards
    message to come out -- enough special processing to put it in there
    in the first place.  I don't mean that he necessarily deliberately
    faked anything.  He just listened real hard and made use of the amazing
    human ability to see a pattern in random noise -- faces in clouds etc.
    Once he heard ("projected" in the parlance of psychology) a message
    into the gibberish, he applied filters to "bring it out", in fact
    creating it.

    I spent several years about 20 years ago working on computer speech
    recognition and production.  I don't believe that there are enough
    degrees of freedom in the speech production mechanism (cognitive and
    physical) to accomplish this.

    I'm willing to bet that if you took an untampered recording of either
    of these recordings and just played them backwards you wouldn't hear
    anything like what you heard on the Larry King show.  You might,
    knowing what you were "supposed" to hear be able to sort of faintly
    make it out.

					Topher
1327.2Are there *unintentional* subliminal messages?EDSVAX::CONFSCHEDTres fromage!Thu Aug 02 1990 19:2512
    I'd hate to try to speculate on whether reverse speaking is possible.
    Just talking about the posibility of reverse speaking is dangerous,
    given the current trial in Arizona where members of Judas Priest
    are accused of putting subliminal messages on a record which allegedly
    were the cause of two teenagers committing suicide.
    
    It is facinating to think our brains can do this, but I'd chalk
    it up pure coincidence first.  If other researchers feel reverse
    speaking could be possible, we could hear more about this in the
    future.
    
    /Greg