Backward Letters, Dogs Detect Lies, Neutron Star Mountains
Curiosity Weekly
Warner Bros. Discovery
4.6 • 963 Ratings
🗓️ 13 September 2021
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Learn about why children write letters backward; how dogs know when you’re lying to them; and mountains on neutron stars.
Children write letters backward because they haven't unlearned the rules of reality by Steffie Drucker
- Sigman, M. (2017, August 8). The fascinating reason that children write letters backwards. Ideas.ted.com. https://ideas.ted.com/the-fascinating-reason-that-children-write-letters-backwards/
- Vox. (2020). Why kids write letters backward [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1iYSsFqVG4
- Why Do Young Children Write Letters Backward? (2016). Wonderopolis.org. https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/Why-Do-Young-Children-Write-Letters-Backward
Dogs know when you are lying to them by Cameron Duke
- Riddle, T. (2012, July 24). Liars: It Takes One to Know One. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/liars-it-takes-one-to-know-one/
- Lonardo, L., Völter, C. J., Lamm, C., & Huber, L. (2021). Dogs follow human misleading suggestions more often when the informant has a false belief. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 288(1955), 20210906. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0906
- Yirka, B. (2021, July 27). Dogs can tell when people are lying to them, study finds. Phys.org; Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2021-07-dogs-people-lying.html
The tallest mountains on neutron stars may be less than a millimeter high by Briana Brownell
- A bug’s life: millimetre-tall mountains on neutron stars. (2021). The Royal Astronomical Society. https://ras.ac.uk/news-and-press/research-highlights/bugs-life-millimetre-tall-mountains-neutron-stars
- https://www.facebook.com/spacecom. (2009, May 18). Neutron Star Crust Is Stronger than Steel. Space.com; Space. https://www.space.com/6682-neutron-star-crust-stronger-steel.html
- Baker, H. (2021, July 21). Neutron star “mountains” may be blocking our view of mysterious gravitational waves. Livescience.com; Live Science. https://www.livescience.com/millimeter-tall-neutron-star-mountains.html
- Gittins, F., Andersson, N., & Jones, D. I. (2020). Modelling neutron star mountains. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 500(4), 5570–5582. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/staa3635
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, you're about to get smarter in just a few minutes with Curiosity Daily from |
| 0:04.9 | Curiosity.com. I'm Cody Goff. And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today you learn about why |
| 0:09.7 | children write letters backward, how dogs know when you're lying to them, and why the tallest |
| 0:15.4 | mountains on neutron stars may be less than a millimeter high. |
| 0:19.4 | Let's satisfy some curiosity. When kids first learn to write, |
| 0:24.0 | sometimes their letters come out backward. |
| 0:27.0 | That can be troubling for their parents |
| 0:29.0 | who might worry that it's a warning sign for a learning disorder. |
| 0:32.0 | But in fact, their brains are just... that it's a warning sign for a learning disorder. |
| 0:33.0 | But in fact, their brains are just working the way they evolved to. |
| 0:37.5 | Learning to write may mean unlearning a basic fact about reality. |
| 0:44.0 | Trying to write backward as an adult is really difficult, |
| 0:47.2 | but it's super common for kids under six |
| 0:49.7 | to write letters or even whole words backwards. |
| 0:53.2 | So common in fact that there's a name for it. |
| 0:56.2 | Mirror writing. |
| 0:57.8 | We don't teach kids to do this, so how do they just do it on their own? |
| 1:02.8 | The leading theory has to do with how our brains are wired to store images. |
| 1:08.1 | That comes down to a visual process called mirror Generalization. |
| 1:12.5 | It means that our brains put more emphasis |
| 1:14.8 | on remembering an object's shape |
| 1:16.6 | than it does on which way that shape is facing. |
... |
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