INTERVIEW: Dr. diana deutsch - Study on “phantom words”

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Ray Tarara: Maybe we can just start by getting a brief overview of who you are and what the work is that you do?

Diana Deutsch: I'm a professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego and I teach courses and conduct research on sound perception. I also spend my time experimenting with sound patterns and in the process I've discovered a number of illusions of music and language and carried out experiments to determine how these illusions inform us about the way we process sounds.

Ray: What first got you interested in looking into this area?

Diana: Into the Phantom words? Specifically--

Ray: Even more broadly the music patterns and things like that.

Diana: More broadly about illusions in music I had thought that I would be a musician as a career as it were and I played the piano as a child and teenager a lot and composed music, and really expected to go to the Royal Academy and study music. My parents talked me out of it, they said I didn't have the temperament to go and perform on stage and so on, it would be too stressful and I decided they were right so I actually went to Oxford and I studied psychology and philosophy instead. My heart was always in music really. I was also very interested in illusions, my father was a sculptor and he was interested in visual illusions in his work. He would explain to me what he was doing and how he thought aspects of his work produced illusions, and so on. I read a great deal, especially Gombrich wrote a wonderful book called Art And Illusion that I read in detail and so it's not surprising that I ended up doing this because my heart was really in both of these for a long time.

Ray: Maybe more specifically, we could drill in now to the Phantom word phenomenon-

Diana: Right.

Ray: -how did you first discover that and get involved in that.

Diana: Yes, I coined the term Phantom word to describe an illusion that I experienced on hearing words and phrases that weren't being spoken and I discovered this illusion by chance when I was expecting to produce a different illusion. Excuse me [coughs] sorry I'll just get some water.

Ray: We can always edit that stuff out. [chuckles]

Diana: That's the advantage of doing your own engineering how easy you can catch things.

Ray: Exactly. [chuckles]

Diana: [clears throat] [coughs] This involves playing repeating sequences of tones to the right and left ears. Since this early illusion involved repeating high and low tones, I recorded the words high and low and played them repeatedly like this high, low, high, low, high, low, and so on. The sequence was offset in time at the ears so that when the right ear received the word high, the left ear received the word low and vice versa. It so happened that although the illusion I was hoping to create required headphones, I also had stereo loudspeakers playing and as I was listening to this pattern, I was surprised to find that I was hearing different words and phrases. For example, no time or Diet Coke, and so on so I generated some more phrases and played them to a class I was teaching. I put one loudspeaker to the right of the stage and the other speaker to the left, and the students wrote down what they heard. I think I'll answer one of your questions now. The best--

Ray: Keep going with your-

Diana: Is this good?

Ray: This is great yes, it's perfect.

Diana: The best way to listen to these Phantom words is to sit in front of two loudspeakers with one to your left and the other to your right. Since the sounds from the two speakers are mixed in the air before they reach your ears, you're given a palette of sounds from which to choose and so you can create in your mind many combinations of sounds. Now on listening to such a sequence, people initially hear a jumble of meaningless sounds but after a while, distinct words and phrases emerge. Verses seem to be coming from the speaker on the right generally differ from those coming from the left. Then later new words and phrases appear, and people sometimes hear a third stream of words or phrases that seem to be coming from somewhere between the two speakers. Nonsense words and musical sounds often seem to be mixed in with meaningful words. People often report hearing speech in strange or foreign accents presumably they're organizing the sounds into words and phrases that are meaningful to them, even though the words sound distorted in consequence. Also, people frequently hear two different voices, one high and the other low, usually coming from different loud speakers. Is this okay? Am I doing all right?

Ray: Yes, you're doing great. Perfect no it's great.

Diana: Here are some examples of words and phrases that the students reported, window, welcome, love me, run away, no brain, rainbow, raincoat, Bueno, Nombre, When oh when, mango, windowpane, Broadway, Reno, melting, ever again. Since this is a large class of about 300 students you could get that many in one class. The Phantom words can appear suddenly and very distinctly to the point that people sometimes insisted that I inserted them into a track, though in reality this never happened. I remember there was an exchange student from Germany once in class, and she raised her hand and I asked her what's the problem? She said, "You inserted the word genugt into the track." I said, "I didn't." Genugt means enough in German. I said, "I didn't." I think it was Igor was the Phantom word that I used at that function. She said, "You did I heard it quite distinctly." I said, "No, I'm sorry, I didn't." This went on for a bit but I was teaching this class so I had to go on to something else. After class, she came up to me and she said, "Look, I know you inserted genugt into the track." She just turned on her heel and left. People do get quite emotional about it actually as these Phantom words sometimes come out with very striking clarity and they really are often convinced that I'm attempting to fool them.

Ray: Could we maybe take a quick step back and could you just give me a definition of exactly what the Phantom word is? How would you define it by itself?

Diana: Not how it's produced but you mean a word?

Ray: Like a definition of what the--

Diana: We'll try various things how about a word that is the creation of your own mind rather than coming from the outside world.

Ray: Yes, that's good. Maybe could we get that one more time but just maybe--

Diana: Is that good is that okay?

Ray: Yes you have a great definition maybe just so we didn't have the context of-

Diana: All right let's see.

Ray: -what a phantom word is.

Diana: A Phantom word is a word that's created by your own mind rather than coming from the outside world.

Ray: That's wonderful thank you. Maybe we could jump back in knowing like what is it about the human mind that creates meaning from meaningless noise and why have we evolved this way to have this phenomenon?

Diana: Perception has evolved to enable us to interpret our environments and so to react effectively to things around us so in prehistory, people used their visual systems to recognize, say, a predator coming towards them, a potential mate, or a possible source of food. They would have used their auditory system to recognize, say, the roar of a predator, the call of a potential mate, or an alarm call, and so they could take appropriate action. The precise details of what we see in here are not important, the importance lies in the features that reach our eyes and ears that enable us to act effectively. Many illusions of vision and hearing have evolved to emphasize features that reach our eyes and ears that enable us to act effectively and many illusions of vision and hearing have evolved to emphasize such features. In particular with respect to hearing, sounds are fleeting by their nature. They go by us so fast that we don't have time to interpret them in detail. This contrasts with viewing a visual scene. We can take time to view it piece by piece. Hearing is even more likely than vision to produce illusions, to enable us to decipher what's going on. So, to get back to your question, for evolutionary reasons, when we listen to speech, the words and phrases we hear are strongly influenced not only by the sounds that reach us, but also by our knowledge, beliefs, and expectations. To understand what's being said, we need to recognize that the same word has been spoken by different people, or by the same person in different emotional states, and that's a difficult thing to do. Interpreting conversational speech, we draw on experiences that occurred throughout our lives and on expectations resulting from these experiences, and so we make inspired guesses as to what's being said. Psychologists call this top-down processing, and it involves memory, evaluating the emotional state of the speaker, and even drawing on visual information. I should mention that the words and phrases that are heard, these phantom words and phrases correspond to what's on the person's mind in a way that's very much like inkblots in a Rorschach test. What do you think of that?

Interviewer: That's great. That's really, really great. I have a question based off of that which I didn't send you but it is-- I'd be curious to know what is it about human speech that we're able to so easily discern it from other noises? Because I know that people have evolved to identify human speech out of other noises. I find it really interesting that people could be tricked from something that maybe is mechanical in nature to hear or something in nature to hear words out of it. Because I think a lot of the electronic voice phenomenon interpretations aren't based off of human speech like what you've done in your experiments, but it's more maybe mechanical noise on the tape recorders that people are using that they hear a word from. That's a long convoluted question but I'm just a little bit interested in hearing more about what it is about human speech that we're able to identify--

Diana: Well, I'd say that speech of all sounds is the most important to us and that we evolved speech for a purpose in order to be able to understand the world around us, to understand what's going on and to be able to interact with each other also. For that reason, I would say that speech is the most important of the sounds that we hear. It's not really answering your question, is it?

Interviewer: Well, it didn't really. I don't think my question was very clearly defined, I think you're hitting on the points that I'm thinking about which is just how interesting it is that we're so fine-tuned to recognizing speech and yet, we also can be tricked pretty easily.

Diana: Then there's also speech is very important for communication. It informs us about the world, about events that are about to happen or have happened and so on. It informs us about the speaker's emotional state, and about their intentions. I don't know whether that's any extra help.

Interviewer: Yes. In this episode, we were looking at a story of someone who is convinced that they get voices through their radios, and yet every time they get different languages through the radios. Whatever they hear is always in the language of the person present which is--

Diana: Oh that's interesting.

Interviewer: Yes, it's a really interesting story. This is exactly why I think this fits so well to explaining that story. It's like it shows that there is the person's [crosstalk] background, they're understanding of their [crosstalk] influence.

Diana: I don't remember whether I mentioned this, there's this effect that psychologists call priming. It's very easy in class for me to say, "Oh, I'm hearing no brain." Or something like that. Then I'll find that maybe one-quarter to one-third of the students in the class start hearing no brain. It's very, very easy to prime phantom words. Of course, that's what EVP enthusiasts do. They tell people what they're going to hear, and then of course people hear what they're told they're going to hear. I think that hearing works in the same language as they've just heard as another example. They're just at this point primed to hear that language.

Interviewer: Exactly. Now that we've touched on the EVP. Could you talk about-- Is there any way that you see this phantom word phenomenon influencing any parts of our culture?

Diana: Well, there are two things that I thought I would mention, two separate things. One is in terms of everyday life, given that people tend to hear illusory sounds depending on their memories, expectations, emotional states, and so on, we would expect related effects to occur in everyday life. I'll say that again. Given that people tend to hear illusory sounds depending on their memories, expectations and emotional states, we would expect related effects to occur in everyday life. For example, in an argument, a word or phrase might be misheard as an expression of hostility and this could worsen the argument. The phantom word in itself could have an effect of making the argument worse, so it's like a positive feedback loop. Another way that phantom word phenomenon is manifest in our culture is in the entertainment industry. We have films like Poltergeist and The Sixth Sense and White Noise, for example, and on reality TV we have shows such as Ghost Hunters, so people have evidently drawn to these things and so they are used in entertainment. I guess people find that whole idea of spirits from the afterlife affecting them or trying to influence them. They find it mesmerizing.

Interviewer: Can you touch on what EVP is? I know you touched on the spiritualist movement in your book and how that-- Maybe this is a continuation of that. Could you talk through that?

Diana: Not about the spiritualist movement, I've already-- We're going to be describing that. I guess I could begin with that.

Interviewer: No, we'll do that-- We're [crosstalk] . Just give us maybe an explanation of what the EVP phenomenon is.

Diana: Yes. Well, just historically, the EVP movement began with the work of the artist Friedrich Jurgenson, if I'm pronouncing it right, in the mid 20th century. Jurgenson was recording bird songs on a tape recorder when he thought he heard human voices on his tapes. He was intrigued and made further recordings for which he continued to hear unexplained voices including some utterances that he believed were coming from his deceased mother. He concluded that the voices were coming from spirits in the afterlife. Jurgenson's work, in turn, inspired the parapsychologist Konstantins Raudive to make many thousands of recordings including some from a radio that wasn't tuned to a particular station so it produced a haze of static or noise. From these recordings, he heard voices that were often distorted, spoke with foreign accents or different languages, often switching abruptly from one language to another and often in a definite rhythm. Further, some of the phrases he heard appear to be related to his own personal experiences. How about that?

Interviewer: That's really good.

Diana: You also asked how does your work in exploring phantom words explain recording captured by EVP enthusiasts? I've something about that. Maybe I could just say, electronic vocal projections are typically brief fragments of speech usually the length of a word or a short phrase. They're often indistinct but a word or phrase can sometimes emerge with striking clarity. Also in my phantom words, the voices I heard sometimes are strange or foreign accents and they often switch randomly from one subject to another and from one language to another. They sometimes produce meaningless words or phrases that listeners refer to themselves. Also, EVP researchers tell listeners in advance what meanings they will attach to the sounds they hear, and this effect causes strong priming. They often play the sounds over and over again, as I do in my paradigm. There are many points of similarity between my phantom words phenomena and the phantom words that EVP enthusiasts describe.

Ray: That's great. When you were doing your research, did you ever here about Marcello Bacci or the EVP starting areas? I think he was after a route diva, a year that he was in Italy. He would put on shows with 60 people in the audience and he would use a radio. Mothers who lost their children would come and hope to hear from their children. Really like-- He was a really interesting case because he would play a live radio with groups of 60 people, people would hear their dead family member speaking to them. It's just so on the point of this thought, what Phantom words is. It's just so clear. You come to the situation expecting to hear your dead child, there's white noise played and you're so hopeful and primed for it that you're going to hear what you want to hear.

Diana: Right. In fact, it does seem that people frequently hear voices of dead relatives, especially a parent. That happened with both Jurgenson and Rajiv, I believe, for example. This was on radio, could the listeners actually hear the sounds as well? The one that you just described, I mean, the the radio show that you just described. Could the radio audience hear the sounds as well as the people who called in to ask to be able to make contact?

Ray: Yes. There's almost a tragic side to the EVP. I think a lot of the times the stories I read about people is people who have lost a loved one, they want another opportunity to hear from them and find a way to do it through the themes for them.

Diana: It also relates to auditory hallucinations. It's very common that people, especially elderly people after their spouse has died during the first year following the spouse's death, actually hallucinate the voices of their spouse and they actually find this comforting. I'm trying to remember what the percentage is, but it's a high percentage. It's about 30% or something of people at that age group.

Ray: There's a phantom word phenomenon, what's happening inside of our brain, does it have any correlation to like the Rorschach experience, the visual patterns that we see? They're completely separate positives.

Diana: Yes, I believe that the phantom word phenomenon is very similar to the Rorschach test in its effect, except that I think it's better because-- Why do I think it's better? I think it is better because words and phrases are somehow more meaningful than visual patterns. I think therefore, that this paradigm of using the phantom word phenomena maybe in a clinical setting could be very useful. I have certainly noticed that people who are in various emotional states will hear things that correspond to their emotional state. Like students in class, when it's exam time tend to hear, "No time and no brain." for example, or, "I'm tired." They hear quite frequently. Actually, it's interesting because often these are negative things.

Ray: Yes, it's interesting. I wonder, has there ever been any consideration in using the phantom word like in some form of--

Diana: When I first discovered this phenomenon, I did test people in our local Veterans Administration Hospital, who were, they did suffer from psychosis. They did hear bad stuff. They heard really bad stuff like I'm dying and kill them and things like that. This happened very early on when I wasn't sure what other people would hear, and I was amazed. Looking back on it, I realized it's very likely to happen with other people who are in such a state and I really should do some clinical studies to look into this.

Ray: I noticed a lot of the words and phrases even outside of this study, they're either negative or they're neutral. Have you heard lots of positive words through the phantom words?

Diana: Actually, I've looked into that. I did give a talk at the Acoustical Society of America about a year ago and in preparation for that talk, I documented the different words and phrases that were heard. Apart from those that were neutral emotionally, they did tend to be negative more than positive, but there's one thing I should say, the word love appeared very often amongst UCSD female undergraduates. The girls just heard the word love and it really didn't matter what the word really was that was being played, they would hear the word love. On the other hand, I have to say the men did not hear the word love. Instead, they tended to hear sexually explicit or inexplicit words and phrases, but that did happen. Yes.

Ray: It's really interesting.

Diana: Yes. That was one nice thing, seeing that the word love written down a lot.

Ray: You know why that might be the case that we don't hear more positive words through this? [crosstalk] at the moment?

Diana: That's a really interesting question. When I looked into it, I was surprised when I actually went ahead and tabulated it all, how strong this effect was that all the things that were clearly positive or clearly negative, there were many more that were clearly negative.

Ray: Interesting.

Diana: I didn't publish this, but I have that data and it's definitely there. Of course, that was in a different situation where I was doing an experiment with very carefully controlled with a single experimenter in a large room and so on and it's possible that the students were a bit nervous and so on. I'm not sure that that would have happened in class to such an extent. In fact, the students rather enjoyed the fact that they were hearing things that differed from what their neighbors were hearing. There was a lot of giggling that went on and laughing and so on. It can be situational as well.

Ray: Do you plan to do more studies and experiments with phantom words?

Diana: As we just described, I really should do some clinical studies on this because it might end up being very useful. Not necessarily just to show if people are depressed because you don't need a Rorschach test or phantom words to tell that you're depressed, but it could start a conversation if it's about something. People often hear things that relate to what's going on in their life. Just as an example that's not particularly emotionally tinged. Our neighbor was building a house next door, and I had him listen to phantom words and he kept on hearing the word castle, and I, "Why is he hearing castle? Nobody else ever heard castle." Well, of course he's building a house. It does seem to reflect on what you're doing at the time, as well as your emotional stage.

Ray: That's really, really interesting. If anyone who's listening to this is interested in trying to experience this for themselves, is there a place that they can hear some of these recordings or can they do some experiments on their own?

Diana: Yes, if you go to my website, it's deutsch.ucsd.edu. I have, let's see-- I can't do this now because I've got Amadeus on so I can't find it, but I could tell you the page on which there are seven phantom words that I just posted, and people can listen to them. I can try to find this. Hold on.

Ray: It's okay. I have the website, I'll be able to look.

Diana: Okay.

Ray: I'll probably do it in the show.

Diana: Well hold on actually I just moved down the desk so I can do it now.

Ray: Is there an ideal condition for people to listen to the show so that you? [Silence]

Diana: That's a good question. Hold on I've just got this, It's under illusions and research it's deutsch.ucsd. edu, and there's a section called illusions and research, and in that section, there's, let's see, there's a subsection called Phantom words, and if you click on that, you'll find that you can listen to seven of these examples, you're asking an important question. It's much better if possible to use stereo loudspeakers to experience this. I don't think it works quite as well through headphones though I believe that people do listen to it through headphones so they can try, but if at all possible stereo loudspeakers, like for example if they have external loudspeakers attached to their computer they could use those, that's a really important point, I also think that they should make sure to listen for a while before they expect the Phantom words to emerge. It might take as long as 10 to 20 seconds before they hear anything, but just a jumble, but if they continue listening, they will emerge I haven't come across anyone who hasn't heard any Phantom words and they tend to develop with repeated and continued listening. I have several of them, if you just start with the first, which goes on from somewhere between one minute to two minutes, and then just keep going, go on to the next, go onto the next and so on. In the end, you'll probably find that you're hearing a very large number, there's just something about repeating this stuff a great deal that causes it to merge better and better.

Ray: Is there a difference between--

Diana: Oh wait a minute I have something else to say. I've just remembered something else.

Ray: No worries about it.

Diana: Okay, it helps to have pen and paper in front of you and to write down the words that you're hearing, this generally firms up you're hearing Phantom words, then another thing is try to sit between the loudspeakers facing them to begin with, but once the effect starts to work, it helps to turn your head somewhat, and even to start moving around the room and you'll start to find different phantom words appear as well, let's see if there's anything else.

Ray: Is there any difference between the way left-handed people and right-handed people hear phantom words or is there no difference?

Diana: There does seem to be a difference, right-handed people tend to hear more phantom words coming from their right than from their left, but people who are ambidextrous or left-handed don't show that difference, but you need to be strongly right-hand to get this effect I can- that's right, I have an abstract, you know, of the talk that I gave there where I described that.

Ray: We're getting pretty close to having what we need, but I do have to ask in your personal opinion, on the electronic voice phenomenon, do you think that there could be anything unexplained around it or do you think it's all totally explainable by the phantom words phenomenon?

Diana: I would feel at risk of sounding dogmatic that it's probably completely explainable by the phantom word for phenomenon unless of course, people are hearing stray voices that come through citizen band radio, for example or something else that just bleeds into with the recording that they're listening to, but I would say, I certainly don't believe that they're voices from the spirit world. Here's one thing that one should consider if they think that perhaps I stumbled on a way of invoking voices from the spirit world, then they would need to explain why it is that if we get a large group of people and you play them one phantom word, they all hear different things from each other, so it's not like the spirit, if it was a spirit, the spirit would be saying the same thing to all the different people, that doesn't work.

Ray: That's great it's a really good answer, and I guess final question for you is where do you see your research on phantom words going in the future? I know you had mentioned maybe doing a clinical study, but what are your next steps?

Diana: Well, I want to try different syllables, different number of syllables so far I just have two-syllable words and they seem to work best, but I'm looking into longer syllables and I'm also curious to know what are the parameters that determine what's heard? Like if a syllable is too short, it doesn't work well, or if it's too long, it doesn't work well. There's a space of time, which is about the duration of a phoneme that seems to work best but I have to document that.

Ray: What is your goal or what would you like to accomplish with this research? Do you have a specific point in mind that you want to reach?

Diana: Well, I just find it very interesting, I do these things because I find them tremendously interesting myself, so matter of fact, I listened to the phantom words myself even now and I generate new ones and listen to them and ask myself why I'm hearing what I'm hearing and so on. It's just at a personal level, I find the whole thing really intriguing.

Ray: What is it, what about it is interesting to you? Like what do you find so interesting about that experience?

Diana: Well the gigantic illusions, you're given a word or a phrase out there in the real world and what you hear is something entirely different and it makes you realize, my God you start asking questions about the relationship between illusion and reality, how much of what we see and hear can we really believe, and I think that it is a big question and that this phantom words phenomena certainly points very strongly to the fact that we don't really necessarily hear or see things that are really out there, but it doesn't mean that they're produced by ghosts or spirits, it just means that our brains are constructively trying to create sounds that are meaningful to us, sounds or sights in fact.

Ray: That was really really good that was an excellent answer, is there anything you would want to add that we didn't touch on around that--

Diana: This is pretty much it, I hope that my Amadeus works and I'll try and send it to you via Wetransfer. I guess I'll use the same, I'll use the, your email right, but that you gave me.

Ray: Exactly.

Diana: If I have any difficulty I'll let you know, but I appreciate your inviting me, thank you very much.

Ray: No thank you this was really, really, this is going to make the episode, so I really appreciate it.

Diana: Thank you, do you know when it's going to air? Will you tell me?

Ray: Well this is like completely a personal passion project for us and we have obviously now full-time jobs as well we're pretty close to getting the script for this one done I just need to plug in your information now, I would say maybe hopefully in a month or two.

Diana: Oh great.

Ray: Will go as planned and I'll definitely send you the link once it's ready.

Diana: I appreciate that.

Ray: We open with the history like spiritualism where this all started, interview a woman who is very much a believer.

Diana: Yes.

Ray: In phenomenon, get her side then we're going to wrap up with your, also your points and try to get both, both sides of the story for everybody and hopefully--

Diana: It's good that people should not really believe this stuff because it can be scary and-

Ray: Exactly.

Diana: -it could influence them in ways unknown ways that could be really bad so I'm glad we're doing it that way.

Ray: Exactly, hope it ended on a grounded note and make people realize that this is a totally natural phenomenon when there's nothing to-- The thing about it is people get obsessed.

Diana: Right.

Ray: I was reading about--

Diana: Yes.

Ray: People get obsessed. He pretty much cut off his family and friends and became solely obsessed on sole purpose of catching these voices, which is sad.

Diana: Of course I have to admit that I'm obsessed with creating illusions. [laughter]

Ray: You recognize their-

Diana: Yes, absolutely I have to say that this is definitely an obsession with me, You asked me right at the beginning, what, who I was and what did I do? I just-- I guess I'm an illusionaire what can I say? Especially of music and speech and so I do find I am obsessed by it and I'm very, I feel lucky that I'm able to do this especially in this particular time when we have to self isolate and I can just sit at the computer and generate whatever sounds I feel I can listen to them and play with them, it's a wonderful way to live.

Ray: That's great I love that, all right well, thank you so much, Diana.

Diana: Thank you, Ray, thanks for inviting me