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The problem with many 'subliminal recordings'

 

'Subliminal perception' refers to the ability to perceive and respond to stimuli that are below the 'limen' or threshold of conscious perception. There is now a vast amount of anecdotal evidence and testimonials and a growing body of research evidence that subliminally presented verbal suggestions can and do alter thought patterns and behaviour in those exposed to them, providing certain conditions are met.

 

However, it must be acknowledged that there is still a great deal of skepticism about the effectiveness of 'subliminal' recordings within the 'professional' community. The basis of this skepticism appears to largely that the concepts behind  subliminal suggestion simply do not agree with the current scientific 'paradigm' - the concensus view of professional psychologists and others about how the mind works.  

 

Working from this premise a small number of  very poorly designed experiments are frequently cited as 'proof' that subliminal recordings do not work. Most of these experiments seem to have been based on the idea of playing a few commercial tapes to test subjects, and subsequently  asking them whether they heard anything other than the background sounds. Others have tried to detect improvements in memory or other measurable criteria following brief exposure (sometimes just a single listening session!) to commercial recordings, or after deliberately mis-labeling commercial tapes.

 

Such experiments typically include virtually no investigation of variables such as the actual content of the test tapes, the quality of the equipment used to play them, the listening conditions, or even of the hearing of the test subjects! In any case, the idea of asking listeners whether they were aware of the suggestions made in recordings intended to act subliminally is scientifically meaningless, and no-one has ever claimed that a single exposure to a subliminal recording (or even two or three) will make any detectable difference to objective performance.

 

However, one set of tests that deserves slightly more serious consideration was carried out in the late 'eighties (Merickle, 1988). The researcher had some commercial 'subliminal' tapes of the period analysed by sound engineers, and concluded that no embedded speech could be detected on the tapes. Of course, the commercial tapes may have been of poor quality, the sound analysis techniques of the time were relatively limited, and the experiment itself seems to have been designed  to 'debunk' subliminal suggestion rather than to approach the topic with an open mind. However, this result does highlight a very common  problem with many (if not most) commercial 'subliminal' recordings. That is that the verbal suggestions are too heavily 'masked' (hidden) in one way or another to be understood by a listener at any level, and so are completely useless.  

 

Many designers of subliminal recordings work on the scientifically unsubstantiated premise that the subconscious mind has the ability to hear and understand speech signals that are thousands of times quieter than the music or nature sounds that cover  them, or which have been recorded at very high frequencies, played back at very high speeds, or even played  in reverse ('back-masked'). Unfortunately, what little scientific evidence there is of the actual limits at which spoken words can be heard and understood at a subconscious level by any normal listener provides almost no support for the idea of the existence of literally superhuman abilities of this kind. Instead what has become clear is that while subconscious perception definitely extends beyond the conscious ability to understand speech masked by other sounds, or distorted by frequency or speed shifts, the limits are only slightly extended relative to normal conscious perception.

 

In practice this means that in order to have an effect, subliminal suggestions embedded in recordings must in fact be within the normal range of detection and (at most) only just below the level at which they could normally be consciously understood, or replayed at a speed or pitch which is only just beyond normal perception limits. Unfortunately, the vast majority of 'subliminal' recordings fail to meet this very basic criterion, and are in fact completely undecipherable by the subconscious mind because the speech signals contained in them are too weak, distorted or highly pitched to be heard or understood at any level.

 

The solution?................