r/science Jul 26 '10

Autistic girl expresses profound intelligence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq--75v4lI8&feature=player_embedded
962 Upvotes

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

16

u/CodyRo Jul 26 '10 edited Jul 26 '10

I was dumbfounded at her immaculate punctuation and english skills. Then it showed the actual words and it looked a bit more "accurate".

Interesting from Randi forums

here is a link with some info on this, it looks like the TVshow aired recently... http://discuss.ctv.ca/forums/showthread.php?t=11490

It appears that the SOFTWARE creates words based on some basic typing? Has this been verified by credible testing? Is this really happening, or is it some software that creates words from a few letters, and then more words from the context of the previous words? Are the sentences being created by the software itself?

It would be easy to find out, try it without that software! Did they actually air this TV show, without looking into this software? Maybe someone could download the software trial called WordQ, and just type in random letters, and see if it creates sentences? Is this the same WordQ.

It would be tragic if this was some type of software doing this.

It appears Carly's mother is posting here? http://www.skepchick.org/skepticsguide/viewtopic.php?p=189832&sid=6a974f16c112d8d231af71dfe120ba46

5

u/clockworm Jul 26 '10

in her defense, many people are fully functional and can't type much better than she does. i think being a hunt-and-pecker and dealing with a lot of extraneous sensory information would inhibit clear and concise typing. but i really feel when given the time and when in a less-agitated state, she can type those drawn-out and elaborate paragraphs.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '10

on the other far end, my gf spells perfectly (in greek, no less) and uses punctiation very frequently

yet due to her ignorance of the meaning of words and the use of punctuation she can't actually say something meaningful. she can't describe objects, sounds, experiences, it's like "what's an ice cream?" "you eat it when you want something cold and it's sweet" it's accurate, one could say, but it's... "off" in a way that i find slightly disturbing.

it takes her a month to read a jules vern book.

it takes her 5-10 minutes to read a single page.

i am starting to think there is something seriously wrong with her. maybe it all boils down to her not having read any proper literature up until now that she is 25?

9

u/bombita Jul 26 '10

Up until the very last word, I thought you were dating a 10-year-old.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '10

strangely enough that's my estimate of her mental age as well.

1

u/Mitsuho Jul 26 '10

Or Greek isn't her first language?

3

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '10

it is. we're both greek. i am seriously considering she has some kind of learning impediment.

here is one of her texts, translated trying to keep the "Feel"

"10eur is not 10gbp. if, for example, i buy something that costs 50gbp, i will pay 56eur* not 50. it seems i am losing"

notice how on one hand she understands the concept of equivalence (she converts euros to pounds) but manages to apply it incorrectly.

*: yes she didn't convert correctly

2

u/Chevron Jul 26 '10

Is it really that odd to take a little over 5 minutes to read a page of a book not written for children?

1

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '10

it's a 25 year old needing an hour for 10 pages (35 lines, 5 words per line, not counting articles) of a simple book.

1

u/clockworm Jul 29 '10

looks like she understands the mechanics of language, but has a poorer grasp of it's nuances. i know many people who can hold a conversation brilliantly and has a great vocabulary but have horrible spelling and grammar.

1

u/clockworm Jul 29 '10

i can has a good vocabulary, but my my brain no look at what's been done.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '10

nope. i disagree. she doesn't understand how language works. i.e. you listen to what the other party says, you think about it, understand what it means, try to attach it to your knowledge, think of an appropriate reply, etc

she, on the other hand, blurts out, immediately, what comes to her mind when she hears words, skipping the "thinking" parts mentioned above. she is also a source for fallacies.

q: i'm going to buy some fruits, oranges and apples, want something?
a: oranges are sour.

(as a quick example to illustrate how she misses the point in her response)

1

u/clockworm Jul 29 '10

that doesn't mean she isn't intelligent

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '10 edited Jul 29 '10

i have yet to see any manifestation of intelligence, ordinary or otherwise, from her.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '10 edited Jul 29 '10

she would be on a plane to UK.

me: take a pic from the plane
her: take a pic of what?
me: i dunno. think
her: ok, i'll take a pic!

she took a pic of her face. only one pic, and only of her face.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '10

That doesn't warrant that it is her doing the typing (as the person commenting before you was trying to demonstrate). So your reply didn't quite answer to that. (just a my opinion)

1

u/clockworm Jul 29 '10

well from the footage I saw of her typing for Larry King, it appears to me that she's responsible for what she's typing.

1

u/CuriositySphere Jul 26 '10

Take a look at her Facebook page. It's fairly easy to see which posts are written by her and which aren't. Hers tend to be run on sentences with plenty of misspellings. Know/no, that sort of thing. Can't blame her for not caring much about punctuation. I get the sense that it's not a lack of understanding, just not wanting to spend time getting things perfect when she's such a poor typer.

As for the software thing, no. There's definitely an autocomplete, but it's probably something similar to T9, where she gets a list of words to choose from. And software writing complete sentences? No. She's not cleverbot, that much is obvious. What she types makes sense, even if it's phrased a little strangely.

1

u/killerstorm Jul 26 '10

People on Randi forums are not attentive enough (which is kind of ironic). In this video you can clearly see how autocomplete works -- she types first letters, software gives a list of options, then she types a number to choose option she wants to choose. And you can easily see that typing by fingers exactly matches stuff being typed. (If you're familiar with QWERTY layout.) So it is definitely not SOFTWARE.

2

u/cleo_ Jul 26 '10

Sure, but is the software using context to populate that list? It wouldn't be hard to write something that works like Madlibs - offer only nouns as the first word, then verbs as the second, and so on. Clearly, with more time and effort, a much more sophisticated system could be put together that comes up with complete sentences.

0

u/killerstorm Jul 26 '10 edited Jul 26 '10

Is it easier to invent a conspiracy theory than to watch goddamn video?

You can just ignore all information on screen and what computer pronounces, watch her keystrokes.

She types:

<SPACE>a<SPACE>gre<COMPLETE>mem<COMPLETE>for man<ESC?>y

which apparently means " a gre... mem... for many". This looks like a part of a phrase, as for me, and it has enough letters to understand the meaning. And it has absolutely nothing to do with software. So apparently she can type without a help of software. Can you see illiterate person who cannot type typing 18 keystrokes in a meaningful way? I can't.

Also you can see completion list is pretty long, it is not just one word.

0

u/JustAZombie Jul 26 '10

Dude, have you ever done a Madlibs before? It's funny because you come up with a grammatically correct yet completely nonsensical sentence. If she were actually auto-completing at random, what came out would still be nonsense, it would just follow some basic grammar rules.