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Some people never know when to shut up during meetings , movies or while yammering aside on the phone at public libraries . Now Nipponese scientist have come up with a portable speech - jamming gun for hire that push obnoxious speaker to come to a stuttering stop .

The"SpeechJammer " deviceuses a counseling - sensitive mike and speaker system to silence verbaliser with their own words — a psychological trick that make a time lag between the time speaker speak and the time when they learn the words coming out of their mouths . The auditory modality delay trips up the brain ’s thinking processes and causes the mortal to stutter .

Silencing Technology

A diagram shows how the speech jammer (pictured bottom right) might work.

It ’s like hack people ’s minds , rather than using a jail cell phone jammer to disable talkers ' nomadic gadgets .

Such a ingenious convenience could enforce a hallow silence in public infinite and at meetings , so that even the quiet people can take go give their say or only enjoy the deficiency of noise . The breakthrough was first reported byTechnology Review , which threw in its own suggestion for deploy the equipment at the United Nations .

A preliminary bailiwick showed that the speech jammer could easily shut up people doing a " reading news aloud " project , but had less success in silencing someone who was verbalise a " spontaneous monologue . " That ’s good news for people who hate long , boring prepared speeches , but perhaps less comforting for anyone who want to shut up spontaneous talkers .

an illustration of sound waves traveling to an ear

The Japanese researchers — Kazutaka Kurihara at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tskuba and Koji Tsukada at Ochanomizu University — see their invention as a conflict - resolve organisation that promotes peaceful negotiation .

But like any engineering , there are obvious ways to abuse the speech jammer . troubler could potentially utilize it to disrupt public speeches or at political rallies , making speakers stammer as painfully as Colin Firth during 2011 ’s Oscar - bring home the bacon film " The King ’s Speech . "

On the bright side , the speech jammer fails to close down meaningless reasoned sequence uttered by people . That leave anyone who has had enough of implement silence or garbled mouth to go aside screaming " Aaaaaaaaaah ! "

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Discover "10 Weird things you never knew about your brain" in issue 166 of How It Works magazine.

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