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Sexually Rejected Flies Turn To Booze
sciencehabit writes "Offer a male fruit fly a choice between food soaked in alcohol and its nonalcoholic equivalent, and his decision will depend on whether he's mated recently or been rejected by a female. Flies that have been given the cold shoulder are more likely to go for the booze, researchers have found. It's the first discovery, in fruit flies, of a social interaction that influences future behavior."
I made the same mistake. I really don't think it's so much of a dyslexic moment as much as it is that you probably see the word "files" on a regular basis and so your brain is more likely to initially think that word when you're quickly skimming headlines. There's also a general lack of context until you get down to the bit about fruit flies, that unless you're reading very slowly, and deliberately, it's not a difficult mistake to make. There are plenty of interesting examples that illustrate how our brain really doesn't read every single letter in a word and can tolerate mistakes to an extent that it can still derive meaning from something that would give a spell checker trouble.
Well, remember
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Not actually determining the order of "e, i, l" is probably common in humans reading this title, so some people will just pick "files" since it fits all the data they've gathered at a glance. Also, "i" and "l" are so close that the two alternatives are hard to distinguish, leading to more errors. Neither of these issues falls under the term dyslexia. While it's common to call letter transpositions dyslexia, the term actually means something quite different. It roughly translates to "difficulty with words" and generally denotes difficulty reading caused by neurological problems (as opposed to, say, poor instruction). Just to fight social stigma, I should mention that dyslexia is essentially uncorrelated with intelligence--dyslexics tend to read more slowly and have trouble spelling, but they're not on average either smarter or stupider.
[Note: I'm not sure if the quote above is actually supported by academic research, though there's clearly at least some truth to it. snopes isn't sure either. Really one should ask a linguist.]