Reverse Speech: A Function of Forward Speech

Michael McCune and Patricia Alfano, Ph.D.
 

Speech, when taped and played backwards produces intelligible words and phrases. This notion first entered the public awareness in the late 60s when the Beatles accidentally spliced the last part of "Rain" backwards and liked the effect (Oates 1987). According to Oates, after word got out that the Beatles were embedding hidden messages in their songs, music fans started spinning their turntables backward and noticed intelligible words imbedded in the music. Later, fundamentalist groups claimed that rock groups and recording companies deliberately placed satanic messages in recordings. When the music was played in the normal manner the satanic messages could be heard backward. This, it was thought, would influence listeners to perform certain acts, even though they were unaware of the message In other words it was a subliminal message.

In 1990 the rock group, Judas Priest, was put on trial for placing the words "do it" on one of their recordings. This was, supposedly, the message heard by two teenagers who interpreted it to mean that they should commit suicide. They tried, one succeeded.

The Judas Priest case was dismissed when the judge ruled that subliminal messages do not influence a person's actions. The judge did not rule that the words "do it" did not exist on the recording.

This prompted several studies to see if people could perceive subliminal messages. Generally, it was found that people were not aware of, nor influenced by, subliminal messages.

Some researchers used backward speech to test for subliminal perception, and although they reported their results of subliminal perception, they did not report on backward speech itself (Begg, Needham, & Bookbinder, 1993; Thorne & Himm elstein, 1984; Wood & Cowan, 1995). There apparently was no need to comment on something that was obviously true; that words and phrases could be heard when speech was played backward.

Vokey and Read (1985) had subjects listen for phrases that they themselves could hear in a backward playing of recordings of Jabberwockey and the 23rd Psalm. They then asked subjects if they could hear these same phrases, and other phrases that Vokey and Read did not hear in the recordings. Subjects were in agreement with the researchers "assignment of the passages" of the time (p1237). Vokey and Read conclude that "people do in fact" "intelligible phrases in streams of backward speech" (p. 1237). They also found that "people cannot be induced to hear virtually anything in backward speech" (p1237). In other words subjects heard phrases that Vokey and Read heard and told subjects were there, and did not hear phrases that Vokey and Read did not hear but said were there.

David Oates (1991), has been investigating what he refers to as Reverse Speech (RS) for 14 years. He has discovered that all speech, when played backward, produces intelligible words and phrases embedded amidst the gibberish sounds of backward speech.

After 14 years of research Oates has developed a method for listening for and analyzing RS. He claims that reversals occur "once every three seconds in highly charged emotional states", and about "once every 15 seconds in casual conversation" (p.19, 1991). In scripted speech "reversals can occur as little as once every five minutes". Although some reversed sounds may be coincidental, such as "dad", and "first" which may sound like "surf" , most backward phrases are not the result of coincidence.

The aim of the present study is to establish that: 1) intelligible words can be heard by an experienced RS analyst when taped speech is played backward; 2) reading an emotionally provocative article elicits a greater number of reversals than a neutral article; 3) when subjects read the same article, a) th eir reversals most often occur in different places, b) reversals are unique to each individual.

Emotionality is defined by the nature of the articles subjects are assigned to read.

Method

Subjects: Subjects were volunteers, three women and one man between the ages of 30-50. They were members of an Art Bell Chat Club, who were familiar with the concept of Reverse Speech.

Materials: Written instructions on how subjects were to proceed. Two chapters from Gloria Steinem's book, Outrageous Acts And Everyday Rebellions, one entitled Patricia Nixon Flying the other entitled If Men Could Menstruate. A Sony portable tape recorder.

Procedure: Recording sessions took place in a small room in the Glenview Public Library. Subjects were given written instructions on how to proceed. They were asked to read the selected article in a relaxed manner, say the words 'end of reading' when they were done reading, and follow this with whatever comments they thought were appropriate. Subjects read one of two selections taken from Gloria Steinem's book, Outrageous Acts And Everyday RebellionsTwo subjects read the chapter entitled Patricia Nixon Flying (Neutral Group), and two read the chapter entitled, If Men Could Menstruate (Emotional Group). The first was chosen as a control to the second selection's emotionally provocative content. The selections, from the paperback edition were copied and presented to subjects on two, 8 x 11" pieces of paper. A Sony hand held tape recorder was placed on the table in front of subjects. As soon as subjects were handed the reading, the tape recorder was turned on by the experimenter, who remained in the room, sitting across the table from the subject. Each subject was recorded on one side of a 60-minute tape, and the tapes labeled by subject. The Reverse Speech analyst set up the tape recorder before each recording session. During analysis tapes were played only in reverse until all of the reversals were recorded.

Results

Intelligible words can be heard when normal speech is played backward. There were a total of 77 reversals from the four subjects, who each read one of two articles. Reading times ranged from about 7-10 minutes depending on subject's style of reading. The four subjects had 14, 21, 25, and 17 reversals. The largest number of reversals were spoken by Subject 3, this subject, who read the article in an expressive style, was in the neutral group. The article that was to generate an emotional response did not elicit any more reversals than the neutral article. Table 1 shows the number of words in a reversed phrase and how frequently phrases with that number of words occurred. In other words there were 2 reversals that contained only one word, 7 reversals that contained 2 words, etc.

Table 1
Number and Word Length of Backward Phrases

n	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
f	2	7	27	13	10	7	2	2	3	2	1	1

Some common words appeared frequently, some uncommon words appeared more than once. See Table 2.

Table 2
Kind and Number of Words Used in Backward Phrases

It might be expected that if reversals are the result of coincidence, that subjects would have the same, or at least, very similar reversals, in the same place, utilizing the same forward spoken words. Both 'emotional' subjects spoke identical or similar reversals in two places. They gave the identical reversal in the same place, but using only one word in common. The phrase, 'single issue, or' elicited the reversal, 'we shit on this'. However, Subject 1's reversal used the part of the phrase beginning with 'issue', while Subject 2's reversal used the part of the phrase ending with 'issue'. Control subjects did the same in two places. Table 3 makes this clearer. The bold word or phrase is the word/phrase both subjects used.

Table 3
Similar Forward Phrases Used to Produce Similar Backward Phrases

If reversals were coincidental, it would be expected that when a forward passage elicited a reversal, the reversal would be the same for everyone. This is not the case. For example, when the forward phrase was 'relief, she had turned a negative into', one subject's reversal (feel you), could be heard on 'relief, she' , the other subject' s reversal (hand in her face, heal you), could be heard on, 'she had turned a negative into' . One subject's reversal ended with she, the other subject's reversal began with she. See Table 4.

Table 4
Similar Forward Phrase Used to Produce Different Backward Phrase

Forward Phrase	Reversal
relief, she had turned a negative into	Feel you/hand in her face, heal you
endlessly that men too	You select me out/I feel so mad now
person I'd ever met including myself	Serve my life/I need an answer now
slow questioning, I learned only the following	Seal with me/It's so close, I knew that
the dam broke	Heard mine in it/mad, no life

There were 31 "I" statements, a few can be seen in Tables 3, 4 and 5. Subject 3 accounts for 16 of these statements.

Discussion

There is no doubt that intelligible words can be heard when normal speech is heard backward. With one exception, the words heard upon reversal in this study do not appear to be what David Oates calls, coincidental. In other words we found only one place where the identical forward phrase elicited the same backward phrase. Clearly more subjects need to be tested reading the same material, and other RS analysts need to analyze the tapes, but our preliminary findings tend to support the existence of Reverse Speech and that Reverse Speech is not coincidental.

Although the Reverse Speech analyst heard the reverse phrase "we shit on this", Table 3, from a forward phrase where the two subject appeared to have only the word "issue" in common, it was suspicious enough to test two other subjects on that phrase. One subject's recording, forward and backward was of poor quality and could not be analyzed, the other subject's reversal of the suspected phrase could be heard as "we shit on this" . Therefore, the phrase, "single issue, or" must be considered coincidental. The fact that the same backward phrase could be heard coming from slightly different aspects of the same forward phrase could be due to slight anomalies in the tape or the individual pronunciations.

At this time we do not rule out coincidental speech for the three other similar reverse speech phrases noted in Table 3. However, Table 4 shows that similar forward phrases do produce very different backward phrases.

The article that was predicted to provoke emotions in subjects and thus elicit more reversals may have provoked emotions but did not elicit more reversals than the neutral article. The two subjects who read the neutral article had more reversals than the Emotional Group. The two subjects who read the emotional article read it in a matter-of-fact manner, whereas the subjects in the Neutral Group read their article in a more expressive manner. Subject 3, of the Neutral Group was quite expressive in her reading, and also had the most reversals. One of the Emotional Group subjects acknowledged afterwards, trying to read the article in a straightforward, non-emotive manner.

Our means of at tempting to elicit emotions to thus increase reversals was not successful, but whether it did not succeed because reading script is not a good measure, or simply because of the style of reading and/or mind set of the subjects is not clear.

Some of the words subjects used in reversal are unusual, not of themselves, but in the context in which they are used (Table 2). Words such as "earl", "face", "seal", "serve", "skinned", "suck", and "wolf". David Oates (1991) would suggest that these words are metaphors, and should not be taken literally. We did not study this phenomenon, we only report that these words, spoken in reversal by our subjects, have already been identified by Oates (1991) as words spoken often with another, not obvious, meaning.

One of the more interesting findings in our study was the number of "I" statements. Although "I" may be heard in reverse because it was part of the forward speech, this result would account only for 6 "I" statements, counting one forward contraction and no backward contractions. We draw no conclusions about this finding at this time.

Obviously more subjects need to be tested, something we preparing to do. In our next study we will have two other RS analysts analyze at least one of the recordings as a check on the reliability of reversal content.

The fact that speech heard backward produces intelligible words may of itself mean nothing. But if it does, if these words have meaning, if they express what we think and feel, as Oates (1991) claims, then the impact of this finding will surely change our lives in many ways. People will not have to go through years of therapy in order to discover the truth about themselves; law enforcement will be able to capture and convict more criminals; and politicians can no longer lie to us.

There are myriad ways in which Reverse Speech can be investigated. We hope others will continue to broaden the field of investigation. The challenge to scientists is to gather and examine the facts with a critical, yet open mind.

References

Begg, I. M., Needham, D. R. & Bookbinder, M. (1993) Do backward messages unconscioulsy affect listeners? No. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47(1), 1-14.

Oates, D.J. (1987) Beyond backward masking: Reverse speech and the voice of the Inner Mind. Published in Australia

Oates, D.J. (1991) Reverse Speech: Hidden messages in human communication. Knowledge Systems.

Thorne, S.B. & Himelstein, P. (1984) The role of suggestion in the perceptiion of satanic messages in rock-and roll recordings. The Journal of Psychology, 116, 245-248.

Vokey, J.R. & Read, J.D. (1985) Subliminal messages: Between the devil and the media. American Psychologist, 40(11), 11231-1239.

Wood, N.L. & Cowan, N. (1995) The cocktail party phenomenon revisited: Attention and memory in the classic selective listening procedure of Cherry (1953). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 124(3), 234-262.