"SpeechJammer" Invention Stops A Person Talking Mid-Sentence

Two researchers in Japan have invented a "SpeechJammer" device that can stop a person talking in mid-sentence, by just projecting back to them "their own utterances at a delay of a few hundred milliseconds". The device does not stop them talking permanently, it is just that they become so confused, they can't finish their sentence and begin to stutter or just shut up.

The two researchers are Kazutaka Kurihara, a media interaction research scientist at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, and Koji Tsukada, an assistant professor at Ochanomizu University, and a researcher at JST PRESTO, a program that aims to "cultivate the seeds of precursory science and technology".

They describe their prototype SpeechJammer, and the results of some experiments, in a paper published on 28 February on arVix, an e-print service owned, operated and quality controlled by Cornell University.


The SpeechJammer works on the principle of Delayed Audio Feedback or DAF. There is a theory that when we speak, we use the sound of our own voice uttering the words to help us. But, if that "playback" is artificially delayed, it interrupts the cognitive processing that helps us maintain our flow. In fact, there is a theory that something akin to DAF is what happens to people who stutter, and it is known that artificially induced DAF can help reduce stuttering.

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