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Original poster

How weird is my daughter's skill?

127 replies

IndiganDop · 28/05/2023 16:14

My 12 year old can reverse any sentence instantly, phonetically, so if you play what she says in reverse it sounds like the actual sentence
(So not like saying "enoph" for phone, she would say something that sounds a bit like "newoff")

She has just recorded the entire song "how bad can it be" from the Lorax backwards phonetically, without reading from anything. She says she can just do it. When she then reverses the recording it is recognisably the words.

How is she doing this? Is it a utilisable skill in any way or completely pointless?

OP posts:

Zonder · 02/06/2023 11:11

That's a good find, OP. Interesting.

Whywere · 02/06/2023 20:11

IndiganDop · 02/06/2023 11:09

By way of a little update -

I found a researcher studying this and got in touch. She has written back with some information about the studies they have done:

"We have found that backwards speakers generally have a (very) high IQ especially in the areas of working memory and data processing - they find these kinds of tasks very easy. We have also found that some of them (but not all) have an altered genetic code in genes that function as receptors in the brain and we think that at least some of the ability to backwards speak may be inherited.
We estimate that about 0.1% of the population have a natural affinity for the skill and many less than this go on to develop being able to recall whole sentences."

So it looks like her pointless talent really is weird and very rare!

Thank you that’s really interesting! One of my daughters has inherited my ability to read/speak/write backwards. Myself and both daughters definitely have a talent in written and spoken English as do my brother and sister. I’m the only one with the backwards skill though out of my siblings.

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