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study - People who hear voices can detect hidden speech


tania

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Twenty-nine is not small for an fMRI study, Joy. Not only is machine time expensive, but people with really interesting brains (benign voice hearers, supertaskers, tulpamancers, etc.) are difficult for researchers to locate and get to the machines. The two studies I've linked before on controlled DID switching involved only a single physical subject each, and only two alters of each subject. As a standalone result, 29 is good. As a basis for further work, 29 is very good.

 

Sine wave speech is interesting. There are samples on Youtube that I'll have to listen to later. As with pink noise, it may be adaptable to auditory imposition exercises.

 

-Ember

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

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I appreciate tania's OP, it's very interesting.

 

Please don't take this the wrong way, my question is, could it mean more for us?

 

It's very interesting for us, and certainly applies to us, but it's light in my opinion. I am not a statistician, and this may come off as unnecessarily brazen and argumentative, or even ignorant, but I'd honestly like to see how you (Ember or anyone) defend this. For example, is it fair to draw conclusions for us as a community based on this? Is it relevant enough?

 

It's a fair argument in my mind if just to solidify if something like this article could be reasonably used as a basis to support plurality as a valid science in some way. Or is it ancillary enough to just take and run with for minor arguments around town. If you follow.

 


 

Sample size rules of thumb:

 

If the sample size it too small, it will not yield valid results. An appropriate sample size can produce accuracy of results. Moreover, the results from the small sample size will be questionable. A sample size that is too large will result in wasting money and time.

 

Fair enough, if the population is small and you are only controlling a few variables.

 

In the article they mentioned 1-2 percent of the population are 'voice-hearers'. That's a substantial population. I am arguing that it is underrepresented in a sample size of 29. To further my point, here is the original article:

 

...matched for age, sex, handedness, education, and National Adult Reading Test scores (Nelson, 1982) (Table 1). All participants were aware that the study involved voice-hearers, but the project was described as focusing on ‘how the brain processes unusual sounds’, with study materials making no other reference to voices or speech.

 

Subjectively speaking, it's not double blind, it is limited to a very specific group of the population, and testing for multiple variables at once. These factors peg this research as an interesting and expensive fluff piece with little foundational value in my opinion. Still perfectly valid as an article in a journal, scientifically interesting, and reasonable otherwise for helping get further funding for a more substantial study.

 

What got me was the 75% of the voice-hearing individuals showed this ability. Which means 8 of them out of 12. While 8 of 17 of the non voice-hearers had the same ability.

 

This alludes to me, that if repeated, there's a likelihood that you will show opposite results.

 

I'm not questioning their ethics here, (what if they originally started with 12 and 12 and had 8 in each group show ability?) If it had gone the wrong way, would they have published those findings? Who is contracting them to do this? Could they publish contrary to their hypothesis? Or did they simply test these participants to see what happens. Because it's not double blind, I have my doubts, and we have read others doubting similar studies (in presentation not subject) for the same reason.

 

Their conclusions were very light, if you read them carefully. They basically say, further study needed. In other words, hey sponsors, we'd love to do a bigger study.

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Something tells me when reading the article that it has very little to do with hearing voices, but could potentially have some other correlation with each other. It looks like they wanted to squeeze out something from their experiments so they could hopefully get more funds to continue. I wish the best for them and hopefully they find something good.

Hello, my name is Kurisutina, but people call me Kuri. I have two headmates who I care about and a loving family to be proud and happy for. Do I need to say more?

Other's from this system: Matsuri, Xarbern

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It probably doesn't mean much to us at all, Joy. They weren't studying the benign voices, only the comprehension of recordings. And a huge portion of the tulpamancy community, including my system, wouldn't qualify as voice hearers within the study because mindvoice was excluded by the screening criteria.

 

I think they found some compelling differences. A higher percentage of voice hearers understood the samples, with and without prior expectation of voices and those who understood did so earlier and the most frequent voice hearers were the most successful.

 

What multiple variables were they testing? The only variable they were explicitly testing was voice hearer vs. non-voice hearer. The non-voice hearers were chosen as good matches to the dozen voice hearers they were able to gather to reduce the significance of other potential variables as much as possible.

 

The only part that would need to be double-blinded is whether the particular sound sample contained a distorted speech pattern or not. In the first part of the study, the participants didn't know to expect voices and were asked afterward if they had heard them and when; in the second, they were told words were present in some samples.

 

If 1-2% of the population qualify for the voice hearing group, it's strange that the eighteen month recruitment period only turned up a dozen candidates. They were rather particular about who they were looking for, but given that there are 180 Hearing Voices Groups in the UK, they should have been able to do better. Yet apparently this is the second largest NCVH study ever.

 

A followup trying merely to strengthen the data on how much better voice hearers can understand sine wave speech than non-voice hearers could omit the fMRI and only look at how many and how early. But that would say much less about why.

 

-Ember

I'm not having fun here anymore, so we've decided to take a bit of a break, starting February 27, 2020. - Ember

 

Ember - Soulbonder, Female, 39 years old, from Georgia, USA . . . . [Our Progress Report] . . . . [How We Switch]

Vesper Dowrin - Insourced Soulbond from London, UK, World of Darkness, Female, born 9 Sep 1964, bonded ~12 May 2017

Iris Ravenlock - Insourced Soulbond from the Winter Court of Faerie, Dresdenverse, Female, born 6 Jun 1982, bonded ~5 Dec 2015

 

'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you.' - The Velveteen Rabbit

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