Science questions for kids: Do people always think in their own voice?

Do people always think in their own voice?

Lilja Suokonautio, 12

Thinking is very diverse. This can be counted as, for example, estimating where a snowball thrown by a friend will hit.

Such thinking does not necessarily require a voice at all.

However, the questioner means above all the kind of thinking that combines information about the environment and experiences and can think about abstract things that are not present in the here and now.

It would be almost impossible to think, for example, what is a lesson if you didn’t use words. Most of the time people think about social situations where language is needed.

For example, we plan how we are going to tell our friends about something or we remember what was said.

Especially in such internal conversations, one often uses one’s own voice when thinking one’s own words, but one can also use, as it were, another’s voice, when enlivening the words chosen by the other.

Annika Svedholm-Häkkinen

docent of cognitive psychology

University of Helsinki

Can the fetus get a stomach bug in the womb? How is it treated?

Henri Tiittula, 8

The most common stomach flu viruses such as noro and rotavirus do not infect the fetus, even if the mother has one.

However, sometimes, very rarely, the fetus can get sick with some other viral diseases. In this case, the virus enters the fetus through the placenta.

Most often, such viruses do not cause the fetus, for example, the same abdominal symptoms as the mother, but a more general infection in the body.

If the mother has a very severe infectious disease, it can trigger labor earlier than usual, in which case the child can sometimes be born prematurely, i.e. before the 37th week of pregnancy.

The fetus can sometimes poop in the womb. This happens especially if the fetus has been in the womb for a very long time or has something wrong with it for some reason. If a baby swallows poop, it can sometimes cause breathing problems.

The condition of the fetus is closely monitored in the consultation, so that we can react to rare fetal illnesses and, for example, start labor earlier than usual if necessary.

Hanna Soukka

docent of paediatrics, doctor of newborns

University of Turku, Turku University Central Hospital

When a snake wakes up from hibernation, does it remember what it experienced before hibernation?

Toivo Ilomäki, 8

Me As humans, we divide our own memory into short-term and long-term memory.

The memory of snakes works in a largely similar way, although of course they have to remember slightly different things in their lives. Like us, the snake also needs the ability to learn, which requires memory.

Snakes also remember things that happened before hibernation. After winter hibernation, they remember the familiar movement routes to the predatory places in the spring, safe shelters, good warming areas, drinking water places, and again when autumn comes, their familiar wintering place.

Learning anything like that is slow in the lives of kys and many other snakes, as they generally expand their familiarity with their environment slowly and steadily as they grow from hatchling to adult.

If, for example, a vulture causing problems in the yard is moved too far from its familiar habitat in the summer, it usually faces great difficulties in terms of continuing its life.

Toni Beckman

project manager

Kyatlas

How loud would the sound be from Finland to Sweden?

Kaisa Laakkonen, 4

Answer depends on where in Finland you would try to send the sound.

From Tornio, which is located on the Swedish border, the sound could be sent, for example, across the Tornionjoki. Tornionjoki is about a kilometer wide at the city. You should choose calm weather as the time.

In an open and quiet environment, the sound is reduced by six decibels when the distance is doubled. In a kilometer, the sound would have time to dampen by about 60 decibels.

For the sound to be heard above the background noise on the Swedish coast, it should be around 40 decibels. When screaming at full volume, a person can produce a sound of about 95 decibels, so it could be enough for a pinch.

It is about 40 kilometers across the sea from Eckerö in Western Åland to the Swedish coast. In this case, the sound should be around 130 decibels, so that it would be heard in Sweden with a strength of 40 decibels.

To produce such a strong sound, you would need, for example, the engine of a large airplane. A cannon shot or the noise of a fighter plane would surely be enough in the right weather.

From Helsinki to Stockholm, as the crow flies, i.e. the shortest possible route is about 400 kilometers, in which case the sound attenuation due to the distance would in principle be 112 decibels.

In practice, there are hills and forest on the way, and also the curvature of the earth would prevent sound from traveling in a straight line.

It would be very difficult to make a sound from Helsinki to Stockholm, except if, for example, you sent a space rocket from Senate Square. The noise of the rocket engines during takeoff could be heard all the way to Stockholm’s Royal Palace in the right weather.

Especially on a long distance, the propagation of sound depends a lot on the weather conditions and the shape of the ground.

Air also dampens high-pitched sounds faster, so only low-pitched sounds can be carried tens of kilometers away. Bodies of water reflect, that is, amplify sounds a little, but the effect is only a few decibels.

Tapio Lokki

professor of acoustics

Aalto University

Send the question, the questioner’s full name and age to lasten.tiedeskö[email protected]. The column is provided by Touko Kauppinen.

Correction February 27 at 7:15 am: Removed the reference to the question about the eyelashes of birds from the introduction. It was answered on February 13.