Cute Cat Photos Are Data-Driven Science Behind Cunning New Language Learning App

An anonymous reader writes "Cats are cute, and cute is good for cognition. Which is why Memrise, a language learning startup, settled on using lolcat-style cat photos as mnemonic aids for a new series of apps aimed at people who normally wouldn't bother learning another language. The first CatAcademy app is 'Cat Spanish' From the article: 'What we found, however we sliced it, was that pictures of cats — cute pictures specifically, of which over 50% were cats — just kept on coming out as the most effective mnemonics... I have to admit we were slightly skeptical to begin with. We're a scientific group, and data driven — but the data did drive us towards cats.'" Now, just to add cat pictures to Mnemosyne.

Cheeseburgers

[NoImNotNineVolt]

I can has espanol?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean: Yo puedo tiene una hamburgueza?

And as a side-note, as I was coming up with that using Google Translate, when I entered I can have a cheeseburger? [google.com] in the from language box, Google suggested "I can haz a cheezburger" instead. Sadly, the suggestion did not translate.

Re:

[NoImNotNineVolt]

Now tell us how you really feel.

Re:

[Redmancometh]

The -1 means we don't share your views.

Re:

[sensei moreh]

Do you really mean ÂYo puedo tener hamburguesa con queso?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Change that "tener" to a "tiene", and the "s"s to "z"s, and yes, that is what I meant.

Yes, it is grammatically incorrect, but I was trying to maintain the same sense of grammatical-incorrectness and misspelling that "I can haz cheezburger" has.

Re:

[sensei moreh]

Or, perhaps ÂYo puedo tengo hamburgueza con quezo? Surely there's someone on Slashdot thqat can do a proper translation for us

misread subject

[Anonymous Coward]

I read it as "cube sat photos"...

Alternatve hypothesis?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"We're a scientific group, and data driven — but the data did drive us towards cats."

I assume they've excluded all other explanations including toxoplasmosis...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Toxoplasmosis is a parasitic disease caused by the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii.[1] The parasite infects most genera of warm-blooded animals, including humans, but the primary host is the felid (cat) family. Animals are infected by eating infected meat, by ingestion of feces of a cat that has itself recently been infected, and by transmission from mother to fetus. Cats are the primary source of infection to human hosts, although contact with raw meat, especially lamb, is a more significant source of human in

Re:

[sandytaru]

Sometimes I suspect that all crazy cat ladies are infected with that.

Re:

[Russ1642]

It's actually one of the current theories for explaining crazy cat lady behaviour.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

loneliness and severe social disfunction is by far a better explanation. as anyone whose had a pet will tell you, they typically become family, the same as humans, thus people who lack the ability to connect with other people will resort to fulfilling their social needs in the only way they know how - through pets.

Re:

[Chelloveck]

So why don't you ever hear about "crazy dog ladies"?

Re:Alternatve hypothesis?

[KiloByte]

Dogs want a competitive pack with rivalry as a basis for its social order, and lots of physical exercise. All cats want from a pack is watching over them when they're sleeping.

too soon?

[Thud457]

still doesn't explain the ::cue::cat, cain't 'splain dat

oh, wait, maybe it does

Re:

[Provocateur]

I would like to believe you, but half of the problems in the series Star Trek: TNG was blamed on plasma.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Page after page of goatse?

Re:thank god slashcode is ancient...

[stewsters]

Yeah, most of you cannot even edit your posts.

[Edit] changing you're to your

Re:

[geekoid]

Those sucker not knowing about the real /. login, are bunch of rubes.

[Edit] Fixed spelling.

Re:

[egcagrac0]

I, for one, am glad that we are not on dotchan.

Re:thank god slashcode is ancient...

[dotancohen]

I, for one, am glad that we are not on dotchan.

I resemble that comment.
  - dotancohen

Re:

[anagama]

wish I'd saved a mod point for you. Very funny.

Been known for years.

[drainbramage]

Where do you think the question 'Cat got your tongue" came from?
Wake me after my cat nap.

Re:

[dkf]

Where do you think the question 'Cat got your tongue" came from?

Our cats prefer liver, but nobody ever said "cat got your liver?".

Maravilloso!

[TheNastyInThePasty]

Esta nueva aplicación me ayudó muchísimo! Por desgracia, todo lo que realmente sé hacer en español es hablar de gatos. Estoy atrapado en México y tengo que encontrar mi camino de regreso a los Estados Unidos! Qué haría el gato gruñón?

Re:

[geekoid]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_mDTLphIVY [youtube.com]

[Edit] Fixed link.

Re:

[TheNastyInThePasty]

Por favor, ayúdame! Estoy fuera de las hamburguesas para comer y perdí mi bicicleta invisible!

Re:

[geekoid]

JAJAJA

Re:

[mcswell]

Todos sus basos son pertenece a nosotros

I thought it said Cue Cat.

[geekoid]

I was like, enough people hack those they can get some useful data?

Re:

[Monoman]

I did too! . I think I finally tossed mine in the garbage a few months ago.

Yeah... cats...

[Anonymous Coward]

The one living with us wakes us around 6am. That's when I want to kill it. Then I come home from work and the urge to kill disappears... damn cats and their hypnotic powers. And I had to pick this cat when we were at the shelter...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Cats can be trained. You need to let your cat know that waking up the human is not acceptable behavior.

My cat will sit on the bed and wait for me to awaken. It knows that rule #1 is: "Under no circumstances are you to wake up the male human."

Re:

[sandytaru]

That doesn't help when they patiently wait for you to wake up, and when they do, sit on your chest effectively trapping you in the bed.

Re:Yeah... cats...

[anagama]

Is your cat waking you up to get fed?

My cats used to do that and I got tired of it, so I set my phone to ring a particular ring tone at feeding time. It took them three meals at most to connect the breakfast/dinner bell to breakfast/dinner, and now they never hound me for food at all. They will gather around when the time nears, but they don't start clawing at my legs or batting my face while I sleep. They wait patiently, hear the bell, and run to the kitchen.

Also, one thing that keeps them happy, is to play with them for about 15 or 20 minutes before dinner -- cats are wired to hunt, kill, eat, groom, sleep. This works really good at keeping down fights between cats because they're all so satisfied.

Re:

[Jamie Ian Macgregor]

Mine has a constant supply of food, only gets something extra at dinner time but still insists on waking me up as soon as the sun rises. I think he just likes the attention.

Re:

[anagama]

You could try a quartz infrared spaceheater. Nothing calms a cat like having a "fire" to sleep by. It's like cat heroin. Hot air from forced air ducts won't cut -- it's gotta glow.

Re:

[Jamie Ian Macgregor]

interesting thought although it's a bit warm where I live to leave a heater going... I only used heating for one evening during our last winter. he does like sitting under lamps but tends to choose the ones with fluro bulbs which don't produce much heat so I see what you're saying about 'it's gotta glow' maybe I'll just try some cat heroin. that sounds much easier.

Re:

[mattack2]

It took them three meals at most to connect the breakfast/dinner bell to breakfast/dinner, and now they never hound me for food at all.

I think your cats are really dogs. Maybe Russian dogs, even.

heh heh

Re:

[anagama]

Boris looks like he was former KGB, then went through some rough times, then found me. Oddly, he also tends to wag his tail, like he grew up with dogs.

Re:

[anagama]

But yeah, I was thinking of Pavlov when I put them on the dinner bell. I was surprised at how instantly they picked it up.

LOLcats are more memorable than schoolwork

[themushroom]

And are more widely exchanged between students than homework answers.

So this is how you make Tumblr be considered an educational tool, other than for studying tattoos, bad photographic art, and self-destructive methods.

Re:

[cusco]

Is that why you never get any pussy?

Reminds me of Disney

[timeOday]

Why are so many of the people in Disney cartoons drawn as animals? They have human minds and emotions, and move as humans, but with animal bodies. Clearly this is appealing or disarming for some reason, but I can't quite think of why.

TOONCES!?

[digitalPhant0m]

but the data did drive us towards cats.

Or perhaps the cat drove towords the data

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_hwerqogzQ [youtube.com]

Re:

[plopez]

Or perhaps the cats herded *them*!

Chevy Citation : most desired auto on teh intarweb

[Thud457]

good grief, [citation needed] [lolcatbible.com]


good grief, googled it, and it was a already thing

Why Spanish?

[bickerdyke]

Wouldn't german have been the obvious language to start with?

http://www.catsthatlooklikehitler.com/cgi-bin/seigmiaow.pl [catsthatlo...hitler.com]

Memrise works well

[Camembert]

I have been using Memrise since a while to learn Mandarin vocabulary including both characters and pronunciation and I have to say that its playful approach works very well indeed. It does not teach you the finesses of grammar but it works well for vocabulary. Really a cool app.

Re:

[Camembert]

I forgot to mention one thing which would have made my post more on topic: in the stock Memrise app that I use with the Mandarin course download, I have not yet encountered cute cats. Even so the methodology works really quite well to learn this fiendishly difficult to memorise language. It seems to be a case of whatever rocks your boat.

AWESOME! new vector for patent trolls!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

for patent in `wget http://uspto.gov/patents/search/all`;do wget http://uspto.gov/patents/apply --post-data="$patent WITH CATS!!!";done

I think I just retired!

Cute cats

[Curunir_wolf]

Welcome to the Internet!

So basically

[ByteSlicer]

Cat pictures make the best meow-monics?

just wait

[Chrisq]

Until Dreamworks sue them for infringing their copyright on Hispanic cats [wikia.com].

What idiot wrote that headline?

[Crypto Gnome]

It should read:

Pretty Pussies Train Cunning Linguist

Is that why half the internet uses Lolspeak?

[Kodack]

Perhaps this is true. Combine cute cats with Lolspeak and half teh internetz nao usez lolzpeak.