1. Perception of Reverse Speech in an Untrained
Audience
Method
 40 participants.
 2 recordings of a speaker talking about the death penalty.
 First recording consisted of reasons against the death penalty
(positive, non-distressed, 42.63 seconds).
 Second recording comprised of reasons for the death penalty
(negative, distressed, 41.83 seconds).
 Participants listened to 1 of the 2 recordings in reverse at a
reduced speed of 80%.
 Participants were asked to identify any intelligible words they
heard.
 The speaker was interviewed after the study and asked to
describe what she remembered thinking while creating the
recordings.
Results
 A Chia squared test was carried out to show if there is a
difference in the number of people who heard or did not hear
words in each of the conditions (positive and negative).
 2 = 26.67, and p < 0.001.
 The results were then split and checked for normality; from
looking at Shapiro-Wilk, results indicated that they were
normally distributed in the negative condition (.133) but was
not normally distributed in the positive condition (.001)
 An independent t-test was carried out; the For group (M= 5.30,
SD= 3.28) and the Against group (M= .65, SD= 1.76);
t(38)=5.59, p= .006
 The speaker said she was thinking:
 “I want to get this finished with”
 “I don’t want to mess it up”
 “The death penalty is too harsh”
Introduction
Oates (1987) suggested reverse speech to be the 7th sense, and that
the human language is bi-level communication. Speech that is heard
once a recording has been played backwards is known as a reversal
(Oates, 1987). Reversals are subconscious thoughts which are heard
amongst the ‘gibberish’ and present themselves as short sentences or
phrases. Oates (1991) found that if a person is distressed or highly
emotional then the reversals can happen every 3 seconds. McCune
and Alfano (2009, cited in Reverse Speech Enterprises, 2014) found
that reversals are individual to each participant by reporting when
two participants read the same article they both demonstrate
different reversals. There is a lack of empirically tested investigations
of reverse speech in any peer-reviewed journals.
Discussion
 Participants identified intelligible reverse speech and
identified more incidents in the stressed (negative) condition
compared to the non-stressed condition (positive).
 After interviewing the speaker after the study, she recognised
that some of the reversals which the participants identified
linked to what she was thinking at the time.
References
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.
Reverse Speech Enterprises (2014). Reverse Speech: Voices from the unconscious.
Available at http://www.reversespeech.com [accessed 11/09/2014].
Negative
Positive
0
5
10
15
20
25
Yes No
Heard
For
Against
Acknowledgements
With thanks to Maja Jankowska, Joanne Ingram, Sean Flanagan, Susan Blamphin
and all participants during this study.
For more information email: aimee.shaw@study.beds.ac.uk
Research aims and Hypothesis
The present study aims to identify if untrained audience of participants can
identify any reversals and if there is a difference in number of reversals
between stressed and non-stressed conditions.
The hypotheses will be tested under experimental conditions.
 Hypothesis 1: Intelligent reverse speech will be heard by participants.
 Hypothesis 2: Participants will hear more intelligent reversals in the
negative condition than in the positive condition.
Aimee Shaw · BSc Hons Psychology, Counselling and Therapies · University of Bedfordshire
Ref #2637