Speaking backwards: A case study

A 31‐year‐old male philosophy professor (Prof. B) who can speak backwards fluently, at a normal rate, was studied. To define Prof. B's ability, recordings, spectrograms, and phonetic transcriptions were obtained. In an impromptu backwards monologue and in passages, sentences, and isolated words translated into backwards speech from written and spoken input sources in real time, Prof. B maintained the original word order but reversed the order of phonemes within each word. These reversals were not always phonetically complete, e.g., diphthongs were not reversed. Forward intonation was preserved. Although reversals were primarily phonologically based (e.g., silent consonants were rarely pronounced), there was a partial reliance on orthography even with spoken input (e.g., “xerox” was reversed as [ksɔriks], not [skariz]). Additional experiments investigated the processes contributing to Prof. B's special ability. In contrast to control subjects, Prof. B generally accomplished speech reversals “automatically.” However, reversal greatly increased Prof. B's recitation times when a processing load was introduced (e.g., in Z‐to‐A alphabetic recital). Finally, Prof. B possessed a much greater ability to identify words spoken backwards than did trained volunteers.