What if your phone could tell you when you’re drunk based on how well you do tongue twisters?
We all know super-drunk people slur their speech, but what about the subtle changes that come up when you’ve only had a couple? Researchers wanted to see if they could develop an accurate tool to differentiate the speech of a person who has a blood alcohol level ≥0.08 (the legal limit) from their voice when they’re sober.
Eighteen people each spoke into a phone on the table in front of them, then blew into a breathalyzer, then they started drinking and repeated the process. The tongue twisters were the usual line-up: “Peter Piper,” “she sells sea shells,” “how much wood would a woodchuck chuck,” and “Betty Botter bought some butter.”
The accuracy of the model to differentiate drunk vs. not drunk from tongue-twister performance alone was better than 97%!!! This isn’t necessarily a new tool for law enforcement (they wouldn’t have the “before” for comparison), but be a very helpful app that one could use to monitor their own consumption and make more informed calls about when to call a cab. (link to study)
