I first heard of cognitive priming on a TED talk where a guy from Skeptic magazine was explaining ‘pseudoscience and weird beliefs’. They played a popular song backward, most of the audience couldn’t hear anything that sounded like words. But when the supposed ‘lyrics’ of the backward song were put on the screen, everyone could clearly hear the words ‘satan’ and ’666′ and entire sentences that were supposedly there. It was easy to hear once we were ‘primed’ for it, even though normally no one would have heard anything but gibberish.
I wonder whether that would have worked with better sound quality. I listened to it once without looking at the subtitles, and I couldn’t understand a word.
I first heard of cognitive priming on a TED talk where a guy from Skeptic magazine was explaining ‘pseudoscience and weird beliefs’. They played a popular song backward, most of the audience couldn’t hear anything that sounded like words. But when the supposed ‘lyrics’ of the backward song were put on the screen, everyone could clearly hear the words ‘satan’ and ’666′ and entire sentences that were supposedly there. It was easy to hear once we were ‘primed’ for it, even though normally no one would have heard anything but gibberish.
Sounds a lot like Simon Singh’s demonstration with “Stairway to Heaven”.
Much the same trick can work, of course, with a song played forwards that has (entirely different) words. Here’s one particularly nice example.
I wonder whether that would have worked with better sound quality. I listened to it once without looking at the subtitles, and I couldn’t understand a word.