Reply to Monash

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ABSTRACT

As a group of Reverse Speech Analysts training to be practitioners we read the paper produced by Monash University and felt that the results begged further investigation which, to our knowledge, has not been done. We set up an experiment following the lines adopted by Monash and in this paper report our procedure and results. There seems to be some obvious omissions and inaccurate statements in the Monash paper that are also noted and addressed here. We note and attempt to address criticisms from others also. We comment on other research. We conclude that the existence of Reverse Speech is undeniable and offer some possible explanations with reference to the work of David Oates, Carl Jung and others. We further conclude that the backwards sequences will be heard better by some people than others and that training the ear helps enormously in identifying them.

AIM

Our aim is to support our belief in the existence of Reverse Speech by conducting an experiment to determine whether and how other people hear certain backwards sequences called reversals.  Since we are all Reverse Speech analysts training to be practitioners our prejudice is in favour of the existence of these reversals and thus our attempt is to show that other untrained people can hear them and therefore demonstrate their existence.

A second aim in this paper is to refute, or present some balance for, claims and statements made in the Monash Paper by Mark Newbrook and Jane Curtain.

INTRODUCTION

Reverse speech is another form of human communication that is automatically generated by the brain when we speak. It occurs backwards in speech and can be heard when human speech is recorded and played backwards. The forward and reverse always relate to each other. It is a communication process that is understood at an unconscious level by the human brain. It is well known that the left hemisphere of the brain produces the actual words of speech while the right hemisphere produces the emotional content. It is proposed that the right hemisphere produces reverse speech because it occurs most often in emotional and very relaxed situations typical of right brain functions.

Following the invention of the tape recorder during WW2 and some experimentation by John Lennon in the early 1960’s with backward masking  (that started a fad of looking for messages by playing records backwards) came some real research in 1980 into the phenomenon by William Yarroll II. He looked into the area of rock music and its’ effects on the brain as well as the subliminal effects of backwards messages. This inadvertently started the hysteria from fundamentalist religious leaders who claimed that these messages were demonic which led to a bill from the Arkansas house of representatives requiring all rock and roll records to carry a warning about the existence of backwards messages.

Back masking is intentionally placing a track backwards at the end of a song or splicing it into the forwards track.

You can tell the difference between backward masking and a speech reversal when you listen to the forwards - in back masking the gibberish of the inserted track can be heard when playing forwards

In the 1970’s the British government spent a lot of money on researching the phenomenon of speech reversals but in their attempts to clean it up (to make it more easily heard) they lost the reversals completely. (It’s Only A Metaphor, p127.)  This happened because normal human speech modulates the amplitude of the sound wave thus reversals occur on the peaks and troughs of the sound wave and the cleaning up process clips these peaks and troughs.

Through a series of unusual but fortuitous events David Oates discovered grammatically correct words and phrases as he played music in reverse. His intention had been to disprove the existence of backwards messages. To his surprise he discovered that they were real. He was fascinated and has continued to research the phenomenon up to the present time. He has made many exciting discoveries about this phenomenon, which he called Reverse Speech. He discovered that while human beings were speaking the unconscious mind was speaking in reverse within the sound patterns of the forward speech.  He found that these reverse speech words and phrases, known as reversals, were always complementary to the forward speech and further that they were always true. After many thousands of hours of arduous and intense work listening to taped conversations David developed his Theory of Reverse Speech and Speech Complementarity. His theory is as follows:
 

1.Human speech has two separate but complementary functions and modes. One occurs overtly, is spoken forwards and is under conscious control. The other occurs covertly and is spoken backwards and is not under conscious control. The backwards mode of speech occurs simultaneously with the forward mode and is a reversal of the forward speech sounds.

2. These two modes of speech, forward and backward, complement and are dependent on each other. One mode cannot be fully understood without the other mode. In the dynamics of interpersonal communication, both modes of speech combined communicate the total psyche of the person, conscious and unconscious.

3. Covert speech develops before overt speech and children speak backwards before they do forwards. Then, as forward speech begins, the modes of speech gradually combine into one forming an overall bi – level communication process.
 

David’s theory has been met with interest and also with resistance by the media and largely with scorn and rejection by academic institutions although currently there is one college in America that includes it in their curriculum. These same educational institutions accepted the work of Jung, Freud, Pauli and Niels Bohr whose ideas were no less challenging.  For this reason as well as in the interests of credibility there is an obligation to be accurate and as scientific as possible in analysis of speech to find and interpret reversals. In order to gain and maintain credibility David Oates adheres strictly to a series of seven checkpoints when documenting reversals and assigns validity factors on the basis of these checkpoints which are:

1.      Is the syllable count of the entire phrase correct? i.e. is it as it would be in normal speech

2.      Are the vowel and consonant sounds in each syllable clear and precise?

3.      Are the beginnings and endings of words clearly defines and distinguishable?

4.      Are the spacings sufficient between each word, so that it is clearly distinguishable form other words in the reversal?

5.      Is the reversed phrase distinct from the surrounding gibberish?

6.      Does the entire phrase have a continuous, melodious tonal flow from beginning to end?

7.      Does the phrase have a definite, constant beat or tempo from beginning to end?

David has also identified and described eight different types of reversals and has formulated a list of categories which allows us to better understand where the reversal comes from and it’s message. Reversals may be:

v     Congruent – these agree with and confirm the forward dialogue

v     Incongruent – these directly contradict what has been said forwards

v     Expansive – which add extra information to the forward speech

v     External dialogue – these reversal directly speak to another person

v     Internal dialogue – reflect internal thought processes both conscious and unconscious giving us a clear insight into the psyche as it organizes behaviour and gives instruction and self analysis.

v     Trail and Lead reversals – in this case the reversal appears either after or before discussion in forward speech

v     Future tense reversals – that predict a future event or behavioural outcome in a persons’ life

v     Comparative reversals – these can be confusing at first because they may seem to be irrelevant to the forward dialogue. This is because they will refer to another subject or event that involves similar emotions to those being spoken about forwards

Some words or phrases will always reverse to say the same thing; these are called constant reversals. Also there are situational constants where the forwards will always reverse to say the same thing in a particular situation. This is found especially in songs. There are also personal constants which will reverse to say the same thing every time they are spoken by a particular person, regardless of the situation, but when the same words are spoken by another person there will either be no reversal or a very different one. An example of this is one client whose reversal on ‘violet light’ was always ‘I am the lord’ but when several other people spoke the same words forwards their reversals were quite different or non existent.

David Oates has also developed a comprehensive list of eight types of structural form for reversals. These structures will tend to be repeated throughout an interview with a client. They are:

      i.        Normal structure – most reversals are structured in this way. They appear as single sentences of a few words with direct and obvious complementarity with the forward speech

     ii.        Long sentences – reversals of twelve words or more are rare and care should be taken when documenting them to ensure that they are one and not several separated by gibberish

   iii.        Single words  - can also be coincidental sounds but are quite common and usually communicate emotions. This type of reversal should only be documented if the validity is high and complementarity with the forwards is obvious

   iv.        Semi Formed – sometimes the end (and it is always the end) of a reversal, as much as a whole word, can disappear into the gibberish. These should always be documented as semi formed

    v.        Mirror Image – where the reversal is exactly the same as the forwards. In some cases some words of the reversal will be the same as some words of the forward speech – this is partial mirroring

   vi.        Sentence Building – here the forward and reverse combine to make one sentence

 vii.        Cause and Effect – which contain two separate statements separated by punctuation that are related to each other in a way that each supports and complements the other

viii.        Link Reversals – extremely rare occurring in quick exchanges between two people in high rapport when there is a connection or common understanding of an idea being communicated. The forward dialogue producing the reversal is the last words of the first speaker and the first words of the second speaker. They sometimes seem to be in one voice.

Reversals often occur in clusters i.e. close together and will be related to a common theme. Reversals may be layered and can be heard correctly more than one way. In David Oates’ many years of research he has identified at least eight different tonalities in reversals. It seems that each tonality indicates the depth of the unconscious from which a reversal originates. This is the reason why different people will hear reversals quite differently. Generally people can only hear 2 or 3 different tonalities but, with much practice, it is possible to learn to hear more. Like all theories the theory of Reverse Speech has changed and grown as more information is discovered and the idea of layered reversals and different tonalities may be altered significantly by the evidence of video reversals. In considering these reversals an exciting opportunity presents itself. If profoundly deaf people who are adept at lip reading can identify the backwards sequences this would provide definitive proof of Reverse Speech. Another project for another time.

Reversals occur in casual conversation at the rate of about one every 10 –20 seconds or in a prepared speech at the rate of about one every 2 –10 minutes. In highly emotionally charged dialogue the rate may increase to one every one or two seconds. In fact it is thought that there is no gibberish but that we just can’t hear all the reversals. A small amount of research has been done on listening for reversals at very fast and very slow speeds but no conclusive results yet exist.

David Oates’ research demonstrates that children’s language develops first in reverse with the first single word reversals appearing at around 3 –4 months of age. At 7 to 9 months simple sentences can be found and at 12 to 18 months speech complementarity begins. At this point reversals become more frequent and complex. At 18 to 24 months metaphors appear occasionally in reversals as children’s games start to resolve conflicts. At 2 to 4 years the metaphor structure is fully developed and reversals abound. Advanced behavioural strategies can be seen in the reversals of children as they work through problems in game playing.

Reversals demonstrate that children have a far better understanding at a deep level of what is happening around them than we normally believe. They give us an insight into exactly what children are feeling and how they see things in the world around them.

With this information parents, counselors and teachers could discover and address the reasons for chalderns’ behavioural problems. Traumatized children could be accurately diagnosed and treated.

It seems that, armed with reverse speech technology, we could prevent damage or at least reverse damage to children’s emotions and metaphor structures very quickly and raise emotionally healthy, successful and balanced people.

Reversals occur on the anomalies of speech – pauses and stammers, very soft speech, laughter and sighs, mid sentence dialogue alterations, quick inserts into a conversation, changes of tone or pace and mispronunciations. 

Testing using electroencephalograms have demonstrated that there is electrical activity in the right hemisphere of the brain of the listener when a reversal occurs in speech being heard. While this fact does not prove the existence of Reverse Speech it does tell us that something is happening that we do not normally detect consciously.

A criticism from a linguist in the Linguistics Department of Sydney University is that;

“phonemic details of forward speech, such as aspiration, which are not consciously processed are being assigned phonemic value in reversals although they may not exhibit all the attributes of that particular phoneme. The prominent attributes only are accounted for. Further, reversals are forming words that transgress normal word boundaries of forward speech.”

It seems that the previous statement as to where reversals occur may partly explain this but also this form of communication is relatively new and very different. There does not seem to be any logical reason, outside of maintaining our individual levels of comfort, why an effectively new language must conform to our knowledge and ideas of our own native language. Many languages are structured quite differently to English.

Reversals can be found on babies, profoundly retarded people and animals, which suggests that the sounds allow the unconscious to be heard in reversals. Mirror image reversals also would be impossible if the reverse was dependent solely on the sounds and structure of speech.

Carl Jung studied the human psyche and proposed that our thoughts and behaviour are governed by metaphors and archetypes contained in the collective unconscious and that these metaphors and archetypes create our external world. Just as Niels Bohr introduced the idea that light exists as both particle and wave and is thus logically opposed but complementary Jung realized that the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious is also logically opposed but complementary as indeed are the left and right hemispheres of our brains. Stuart Wilde, in an article on his web site, (www.stuartwilde.com/sw_articlesreverse_speech.htm) proposes the possibility that the unconscious operates backwards in time.

Reverse Speech has shown that the unconscious or the soul and also the collective unconscious (shown to be the origin of reversals) deal in pictures that are played out by an entire cast of metaphors. David Oates has compiled a list of metaphors and these metaphors give us a comprehensive description of exactly what is happening in the unconscious. Metaphors are either structural (like wolf and lord) or operational (like ill or hungry). Structural metaphors are causal and operational metaphors are the ones that actually produce behaviour as it is seen in the world.  To understand them we must leave our conscious perceptions and internal filters behind. Our thinking at an unconscious level is done in pictures. The power of imagery is well recognized and used in things such as creative visualization. Most of the very well known ‘new age’ writers such as Louise Hay, Deepak Chopra, Dan Millman, to name a few, use imagery and visualization.  Imagery is behind the idea that ‘as within so without’ – our outside experience is a reflection of our inner world, the world of the unconscious both individual and collective. This fact, at a core level, is possibly the reason for the Buddhist idea that this is the world of impermanence, of illusion. In the Christian Bible lessons are presented in the form of parables – picture stories. We can now see why this is so. How much more sense can we make of this corner stone of Christianity if we look at it in the light of our knowledge of the metaphor structure of the unconscious mind.

David Oates has discovered through his own children that children can adopt the metaphors or parts of the metaphor structure of their parents. We may also, as adults, sometimes adopt the metaphors or parts of the metaphor structure of those with whom we live and/or work whether they be partners, friends, workmates or adult children. Human beings are quick to pick up and include in their vocabulary words used by associates or local idioms after they move to a new area.

One of the most amazing and wonderful things about Reverse Speech Technology is it’s therapeutic application called metaphor restructuring. This is achieved by a process of interview, reversal discussion, pre – trance interview and metawalk (a light trance state where the practitioner, through imagery, shifts and alters the metaphor structure within the unconscious). David Oates has spent many years perfecting this process of session work to the point where he now has a very high success rate. Anyone who truly wants to change aspects of personality or their external circumstances will find a powerful tool in Reverse Speech session work. It seems to be the fast track method for implementing long desired changes. It gets right to the core of our damaged psyches and re – organizes the pictures of our unconscious to restore harmony.  This leads very quickly to external changes, often quite dramatic. Many modalities profess the ability to facilitate change but these are usually of limited benefit because they leave the landscape of the unconscious unchanged so any changes are superficial and usually transitory.

One problem experienced by David and anyone else who listens to reversals is reversal reaction. Often just hearing about Reverse Speech can cause reversal reaction. The level of reaction is usually determined by the level of congruity between the conscious and unconscious of the individual. Reversal reaction can be either passive (rejection) or active (attack) ranging from increased emotional states through tension in family dynamics, odours, sleep walking or talking and increased dreams to transference (or projection in the words of Jung), denial, illogical intense anger and strong desire to sever all connection with Reverse Speech. David Oates has suffered greatly over the years as a result of strong reversal reactions in client’s sometimes even going so far as death threats. Probably this reaction is caused by the ego whose job it is to maintain the status quo and keep us safe. However, often, it is motivated by its own desire to survive as is suggested in ‘A Course In Miracles’ ( 2^nd Ed.,1996, p42.) and what may well be good for the whole organism may also diminish the ego.

Therefore it is highly desirable to have unconscious consent when conducting interviews and metawalks during session work. In order to get lots of clear answers from the unconscious we need to get lots of clear reversals and Reverse Speech draws heavily on another modality to achieve this. This modality is Neuro – Linguistic Programming (NLP).

In conducting an interview we want to encourage conversation that delivers a high proportion of clear reversals. The greater the number and clarity of reversals we get the clearer picture we can obtain and the better able we are to help a client.

We first need to establish a rapport with the client so they will be more at ease and conversation will be freer flowing. Remembering that communication is 7% words, 38% tonality and 55% physiology we create rapport through matching, mirroring and cross over mirroring of a clients’ posture, gestures, expressions, tone, volume, pitch etc.

Importantly we need to remember the principle of speech complementarity in questioning because what is being talked about forwards is what will be talked about in reverse. We therefore need to get an accurate idea of what the client is wishing to change, fix or have as an outcome so that all our questioning will be directed in a way that accesses that area quite specifically.

We know that an external event will be represented internally in one of several ways namely, visually, auditorally or kinesthetically and that people will access these representations by either remembering or constructing images, words or sounds. Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) gives us some useful tools for tapping into this internal representation and for eliciting specific types of communication. Visual accessing allows the person to access large amounts of data instantly and strongly. Also kinesthetic and tonal accessing keep the client most in a feeling state which will produce more reversals. We can determine when they are using these methods of accessing by observing eye movements. To encourage particular accessing we ask certain types of questions that elicit problems including context, desired outcomes, and possible resources. Having asked these questions we then feed back the answers in order to clarify and refine them. Put simply:

1.      Elicit present state – find out how they feel now

2.      Break state – move them out of this by breaking rapport

3.      Elicit outcome state – finding out what they would like as an outcome

4.      Elicit resource state – finding out how they can achieve the desired outcome

Questioning in a way that requires people to think about the way they feel about an event, experience, problem or outcome or to compare and evaluate alternatives e.g. how do you feel about that? Or how do you see yourself achieving that? Or what will happen if you have it? Or where do you see yourself in three months time? Or what stops you from achieving that? encourages conversation that should have a high proportion of clear reversals.

Meta feelings evaluate events and have a positive or negative value. They are emotions or feeling states and they can be induced through past anchoring of experiences and/or beliefs. They are particularly useful for ensuring many clear reversals.

Another important aspect of rapport building is establishing energetic rapport by surrounding the client with our own energy field, which can be extended outwards and drawn back, with practice, at will. (Partnering, A New Kind of Relationship, Hal Stone, Ph.D. and Sidra L. Stone, Ph. D., 2000, pp. 115-135). Having established energetic rapport the rest seems to follow automatically.

Reverse speech has much to offer in the corporate world, the area of criminal investigation, politics, relationship problems and healing of children. David Oates has worked with the FBI in America with some amazing results as well as some devastating problems but the potential for assisting in this area is enormous because no matter what we say forwards our unconscious via reversals will tell the absolute truth. Members of the Al Quaeda terrorist group are currently being interviewed and their dialogue analysed for reversals. An interesting phenomenon is occurring – their reversals are in English! This in itself raises all sorts of questions about the intentions of the individual unconscious, the program of the collective unconscious and the ultimate good, right and wrong as viewed from a higher viewpoint etc..

In politics we now have an accurate way of discovering the truth or otherwise of politicians speeches or statements and motives.

Already David Oates does analyses for people wanting answers to correct business

decisions, investment decisions and the like. In the area of employment choices, whether that means which job will be the most suitable for someone or whether this person or that one will be the best employee to hire, the potential is obvious.

In relationship counselling the potential of Reverse speech is huge. It allows us to get to the absolute truth about what is actually going on between two people and will give us answers about how it can be fixed.

As previously mentioned with the help of Reverse speech Technology we can accurately diagnose problems in traumatised children and with metaphor restructuring bring their souls back into harmony.

Both James Redfield in ‘The Celestine Prophecy’ (1995) and Neale Donald Walsch in ‘Conversations With God’ (1994) suggest that the answer to the world’s ills lies in openness. Reverse Speech certainly lays open everything that is hidden for those brave enough to approach it. In Reverse Speech by combining the forwards and the reverse we have total communication. When we speak we communicate through the spoken word, tone, pitch, volume, gestures, facial expression. In fact 93% of what we say has nothing to do with the words we use. Now we know that we also communicate in reverse from unconscious mind to unconscious mind picking up impression on a conscious level. Our unconscious mind is speaking our truth whether we know it or not. With the help of Reverse Speech we can reach a point of being totally congruent with our soul, with who we really are, and speak and act out that truth openly to ourselves and to the world.

This process can be very confronting and threatening. In the words of Carl Jung:

“ Whoever looks into the face of the water will first of all see his own face. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the Persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror shows the true face. This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people”

(Carl Jung: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, 1968)

THE MONASH PAPER by Mark Newbrook and Jane Curtain (in Forensic Linguistics 5(2) 1998)

This paper presents some shortcomings and we note these in the interests of accuracy in experimentation and the results generated. Firstly the authors fail to state their bias. Although it is apparent it should be stated at the start because it has been demonstrated that the beliefs and expectations of the researcher can influence the outcome of any research. This fact is noted by Einstein many years ago. (Celestine Prophecy, James Redfield, 1995.) This is particularly so when one considers the influence of obedience to authority discussed at length in Stanley Milligram’s book, ‘Obedience to Authority’ (1975). Peoples perception of authority can depend on institutional context, perceived integrity, competence and purpose (p66). An experiment conducted by representatives of a University department would seem to draw, by default, a perception of integrity and competence. People become absorbed in the task and concerned about living up to the expectations of the established authority (i.e. those conducting the research) (p7). These aspects must be taken into account in interpreting results.

They level as a criticism the fact that Reverse Speech enterprises is very overtly commercial. It seems that this does not make it any different to individuals or organisations promoting and using as a counselling tool such things as Neuro Linguistic Programming, Hypnotherapy, Voice Dialogue and many others. The fact that it is a commercial organisation does not automatically destroy its’ credibility.

They claim that there is no evidence that Reverse Speech practitioners have any other relevant knowledge or skills but do not support this claim with examples or their own evidence. David Oates has diplomas in Hypnotherapy and Neuro Linguistic Programming (referred to on p.52 of It’s Only A Metaphor) Terese Johnson, CRSP, MNLPP, is a Master Neuro Linguistic Programming Practitioner whose details can be assessed by visiting www.reversespeechanalysis.com. John L. Johnson works with law enforcement agencies in Oregon and his qualifications and experience can be verified by visiting his website at www.reve3rsespeechconsult.com. Most of the people who have recently completed the first year to become Reverse Speech Analysts will continue studying to Practitioner level already are involved in the practice of a wide range of counselling or healing modalities including NLP, rebirthing, massage, huna healing.

They claim that there is no evidence that Reverse Speech has been accepted as a course of study at some educational institutions. On page 245 of his book, ‘It’s Only A Metaphor’ David Oates states that the Pan Pacific University in Hawaii accepted Reverse Speech as an accredited course of study in 1995.

The paper states that there is in fact some evidence that refutes Oates’ claims to have worked with the police and other government agencies but fails to state what that evidence is. In fact Mr Oates has a letter (It’s Only A Metaphor, p40) that confirms his involvement in a police case in Sydney and he discusses his involvement in being consulted to find solutions in the siege at Waco, Texas by David Koresh. (op.cit. p97)

On page 177 the authors claim that it is more difficult to hear reversals without information about the corresponding forward speech and that being, as they are, couched in metaphors, renders their interpretation difficult. To the untrained this may be so just as it is with any other subject including all forms of counselling but this simply shows that training is necessary to gain an understanding of the language of speech reversals and the unconscious mind. Linguistics itself is mostly unintelligible to the untrained. Phonetic transcription would be impossible without training and an understanding of the symbols used. Knowledge of forward speech is not required at all except to locate that part specifically responsible for the reversals found. In fact, the less that is known about the content of the forward speech the more objective the analyst can be.

They make quite a case of the fact (and it is undeniable) and Ms Curtain continues the case on her website and in a radio interview with Paul Willis (www.abc.net.au/science/correx/archives/reverse.htm , that prompting by telling people what is there is helpful in hearing reversals. I wonder whether they or any of their acquaintances have ever ridden in a taxicab and tried to make sense of what is said over the two-way radio? It mostly is extremely difficult to understand but the driver has no trouble at all. Thus, again, tuning the ear is vital and were you given some prompting as to what was said it would be much easier to hear it. The fact that knowing what it says makes it easier to hear does not, of itself, prove that there is nothing to hear except gibberish.

Newbrook and Curtain state (page 178) that it is impossible that different sequences can appear on the same forward speech when spoken by different people.  If the reversed sequences are dependent on the sounds and structures of forward speech (which I am as yet unconvinced of) it would be quite easy to test this by phonetically transcribing, exactly as spoken, a sample of reversals together with the corresponding forward speech. The written form of language and the spoken form can be very different and also the spoken form varies considerably from person to person. No attempt appears to have been made to demonstrate the validity of their claims.

In reporting their results Newbrook and Curtain they criticise David Oates non-disclosure of figures and analyses on his own experiments. On his official website, reversespeech.com.au one can find, through the links displayed, the results of his blind testing.  A summary of these results and some conclusions appear in appendix 9

On page 181 the Monash paper stated that the fact that the sequences were not surrounded by gibberish would favour the hearing of the reversal. It is not necessarily the case. It is also possible that the surrounding gibberish may make the reversal more clearly heard by providing a comparison. It seems that they would be advised to test this before making pronouncements about it.

From page 186 to page 189 Newbrook and Curtain make a series of comments that can best be described as value judgements and some of them fall well outside the field of linguistics. Comments referring to mainstream psychology, Neuro-linguistic programming, Christian world view. As to their comments on page 188 about

 a/ syllable counts - I find no evidence that they have isolated the exact forward speech responsible for the reversal and further this comment does not take into account that the spoken form of language can vary quite significantly from the written form. Also it assumes that the words of forward speech will form discrete words in reverse without any of the anomalies such as sighs etc. forming part of the reverse sequence. As previously suggested in this document this may not necessarily be the case.

b/ audible spaces between words – it seems that this has been extrapolated way beyond what was ever intended. We are surely talking about word boundaries – the spaces are minuscule. The point is that words are clearly separated from each other and certainly listeners who do not know the language cannot identify all word boundaries but even they can identify some of the more obvious ones.

c/ again it seems pointless to talk about people who do not know the language. Not only would they not be able to distinguish all word boundaries but also they would have no idea what was being said either forwards or backwards.

d/ if we are taking the written form only this may be true but as previously noted people verbalise sounds very differently and the forwards and reverse must be transcribed phonetically exactly as it sounds not as it is written because there can often be a great variation between the spoken and written form. Let’s look at an example:

forwards = (sca)ry  -  reverse = eggs….reversal is formed by the part in parentheses.

In this case the ‘c’ is more voice because it is not aspirated and so it sounds more like ‘g’.

e/ in this case I can only speak from personal experience and that is that the distinction between gibberish and reversal is something clearly heard. If this is not so most analysts will not document it. And

f/ the sense of a continuous, melodious tonal flow is admittedly fairly obscure but it is something that students get a feel for as they progress through the course just as there is a certain ‘knack’ that one must acquire to fully understand many activities.

Finally on page 180 (implausibility no. 5) the authors sarcastically note that it is hard to see how “the vastly complex linguistic and psychological systems” needed for the production of Reverse Speech could have gone unnoticed by scholars in these fields. This statement is patently ridiculous. Many things have escaped scholars in particular fields for many years. The spheric nature of the earth not only escaped most scholars for a very long time but when it was suggested as a possibility it was widely ridiculed as insanity at best.

METHODOLOGY  

For this experiment an advertisement was placed in a local paper calling for volunteers to participate in the experiment. No monetary consideration was offered, sought or given. Selection methods were quasi – random in as much as all people who responded to the ad were accepted. No assessment was made as to their linguistic capabilities as seems to have been the case in the Monash experiment. Not all participants were native English speakers. It might be argued that certain types of people would respond to such an ad and thus selection was not truly random but no criteria were set for selection hence the term quasi-random.

Volunteers were randomly divided into 4 groups of 5 and given 4 different sets of instructions. We followed the same format as Monash. All conditions were identical for all groups apart from instructions.  The setting was the same and the same ten sound files were played to each group. Each sound file was played three times at three separate speeds. The instructions (appendices 1,2,3 and 4 include these instructions and tally sheets) were (for groups ‘A’ and ‘B’ to indicate in writing whether they could hear any of the sentences words or syllable on the instruction sheets. Group ‘A’ was told the real reversals (as agreed by the class) and group ‘B’ was given a set of bogus reversals. Group ‘C’ was told there were intelligible sequences and group ‘D’ was told that there may or may not be intelligible sequences. However after the first group we noticed that the instructions were a little ambiguous and changed the following groups’ instructions from: indicate in writing whether you can hear……….

to: indicate in writing what you can hear …….. The reason for this change was that many participants wrote: “yes, can hear all” and similar indications that they had heard the reversal. This did not allow accurate scoring of sentence, word and syllable numbers.

A set of ten high validity reversals was selected for the test. A set of bogus written reversals was created for Group B. These bogus reversals were created so that they sounded similar, when verbalised, to the real reversals and so that the number of words and syllables was identical to the real reversals in each case.

The reversals used in this experiment were as follows:

1.      I/ skinned/ them/ all/                                    4

2.      My/ ad/ vice/ is/ ran/ cid/                             6

3.      You’re/ fright/ ened/ lean/ on/ me/   6

4.      I’m/ the/ on/ ly/ one/                                    5         

5.      I’m/ so/ full/ of/ shit/                                    5

6.      We’ll/ just/ snip/ out/ the/ eye/ ar/ tist/          8

7.      I/ have/ an/ ol/ der/ sis/ ter/              7

8.      Help/ me/ with/ this/                                    4

9.      Need/ more/ sun/ light/                                4

10.  Sad/ ba/ by/                                                3

Syllable divisions are shown by the slashes and a syllable count is recorded at the end of each sentence. For Group B bogus reversals were used. These were chosen because of similarity of sound and identical syllable count. These were as follows

1.      Why/ spin/ the/ ball/                                    4

2.      Buy/ a/ slice/ in/ tran/ sit/                             6

3.      More/ height/ ened/ dream/ a/ bee/  6

4.      Man/ the/ lone/ ly/ run/                                5

5.      Lime/ soap/ fills/ the/ pit/                             5

6.      He/ must/ tip/ out/ the/ rye/ bas/ ket/            8

7.      I/ have/ been/ bold/ and/ kissed/ her/           7

8.      Hurt/ knee/ with/ fist/                                   4

9.      Meet/ your/ fun/ site/                                   4

10.  Sat/ da/ vie/                                                3

Each participant was given a score out of a possible (10) for sentences, (43) for words and (52) for syllables and (105) overall. (tally sheets included in appendices 1,2,3 and 4). Means were calculated for each group for each of the above categories and an overall mean was calculated for each group using the sums of the scores for all categories. The means derived were tested for significance using two sample ‘t’ tests. (Minitab for Windows– student edition, 1995). For simplicity the figures stated below are those for the overall total score including sentences, words and syllables. However the ‘t’ tests carried out for each category are included in the appendices (appendices 5,6,7 and 8) for those who may wish to look at them. The subsequent ‘t’ values with 95% confidence intervals were as follows:

GROUP A VS GROUP B                   T = 1.96                       NOT SIGNIFICANT

GROUP A VS GROUP C                   T = 2.36                       NOT SIGNIFICANT

GROUP A VS GROUP D                   T = 2.45                       NOT SIGNIFICANT

GROUP B VS GROUP D                   T = 1.60                       NOT SIGNIFICANT

GROUP B VS GROUP C                   T = 2.58                       NOT SIGNIFICANT

GROUP C VS GROUP D                   T = - 0.24                    NOT SIGNIFICANT

Table 1. Scores and means for each group