SpeechJammer helped these two Japanese researchers win the Ig Nobel acoustic prize. The development has been reported to be a device that confuses and repress an individual, who is speaking, by letting the orator hear their own delayed recording.

Ahead of the Harvard ceremony, Kazutaka Kurihara, researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, asserted that the principle behind developing such a device was to make it use during a conference, in which chairs at the conference hall have been provided with button to put an end to additional talks.

This will help make the meaning of the meeting and discuss fairer.

Harvard University's Sanders Theatre hosted the 22nd yearly event to give the prizes, which are awarded by the science humor magazine Annals of Improbable Research to 10 different categories as a satire of Nobel Prizes.

It has been reported that it was the sixth year in a sequence that the Ig Nobel prize was awarded to the Japanese scientists.

According to a source familiar with the Ig Nobel selection process, "Kurihara and his partner Koji Tsukada, researcher at the Japan Science and Technology Agency, were honored for creating the machine and for addressing the important issue of overly talkative people".