Japanese researchers make "speech-jamming" gun


Recommended Posts

Japanese researchers make "speech-jamming" gun

(CBS News) Japanese researchers have found the answer to one of life's oldest questions: "How can I get that person to shut up?"

Researchers Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada from the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and Ochanomizu University, respectively, published a paper with details of a gun they are calling the "SpeechJammer."

The device works by "shooting" the offending voice back at the source. Users can literally aim at a target and pull the trigger.

"In general, human speech is jammed by giving back to the speakers their own utterances at a delay of a few hundred milliseconds," the researchers said in the paper. "This effect can disturb people without any physical discomfort, and disappears immediately by stop speaking."

By exploiting a phenomenon called Delayed Auditory Feedback (DAF), the researchers were able to trick the brain into vocal submission. The idea is that when we speak, we don't just generate sound. Our brains actually need to hear what comes out of our mouths. It's called "auditory feedback."

"Our natural utterances are jammed when the auditory feedback is artificially delayed. It is thought that this delay affects some cognitive processes in our brain," the researchers said.

Basically, it is nearly impossible to speak if your own words are played back to you at a delay of about "a few hundred milliseconds."

The result is very similar to stuttering. Apparently, DAF can cause a "physically unimpaired" person to stutter. In an ironic twist, DAF can also help a improve stuttering. And, medical DAF devices already exist for that purpose.

The researchers were able to build a working prototype. Details of their research and methodology can be found at the Cornell University Archives under the title, "SpeechJammer: A System Utilizing Artificial Speech Disturbance with Delayed Auditory Feedback."

source: http://www.cbsnews.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's a pity it cannot be used for text! It would be wonderful to shut some people up here! :laugh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

.

Japan invents speech-jamming gun that silences people mid-sentence

speech%20jammer%20gun.jpg

Japanese researchers have invented a speech-jamming gadget that painlessly forces

people into silence.

Kazutaka Kurihara of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology,

and Koji Tsukada of Ochanomizu University, developed a portable "SpeechJammer" gun

that can silence people more than 30 meters away.

The device works by recording its target's speech then firing their words back at them

with a 0.2-second delay, which affects the brain's cognitive processes and causes

speakers to stutter before silencing them completely.

Describing the device in a research paper published Feb. 28 at arXiv.org, Kurihara and

Tsukada wrote, "In general, human speech is jammed by giving back to the speakers their

own utterances at a delay of a few hundred milliseconds. This effect can disturb people

without any physical discomfort, and disappears immediately by stopping speaking."

They found that the device works better on people who were reading aloud than engaged

in "spontaneous speech" and it cannot stop people making meaningless sounds, such as

"ahhh," that are uttered over a long time period.

Kurihara and Tsukada suggested the speech-jamming gun could be used to hush noisy

speakers in public libraries or to silence people in group discussions who interrupt other

people's speeches.

"There are still many cases in which the negative aspects of speech become a barrier to

the peaceful resolution of conflicts," the authors said.

Source

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We should ask them to modify it slightly in the sense that when someone is writing something stupid, it stops them

And then we should put it in our

Jokes and Funny Stuff forums

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.