[HN Gopher] Speakers of different languages remember visual scen...
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Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently
Author : wmlive
Score : 155 points
Date : 2023-08-19 15:09 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| zodzedzi wrote:
| > Bilinguals and monolinguals remembered English competitor words
| that overlapped phonologically with a spoken English target
| better than control objects without name overlap. High Spanish
| proficiency also enhanced memory for Spanish competitors that
| overlapped across languages. We conclude that linguistic
| diversity partly accounts for differences in higher cognitive
| functions...
|
| This conclusion sounds like quite the leap.
|
| Even if the two observations they generated turned out to be 100%
| ironclad true, generalizing to "speakers of different languages"
| as a title and "linguistic diversity" from observing just two
| languages seems like a big jump.
| canvascritic wrote:
| Man this reminds me of this trip I took to the Maldives as a kid.
| While spending time with locals, I learned the word "feyli," a
| term unique to their Dhivehi language. "Feyli" describes the
| feeling of sand between your toes as waves recede on a beach, a
| sensation familiar to many but so specific that English doesn't
| have a singular word for it.
|
| Before being introduced to feyli I simply enjoyed beach walks as
| a sum of various experiences - the warmth, the sound, the view.
| having a label for that specific feeling of sand sifting between
| my toes made it stand out in isolation. Each time I walked along
| the shore, my attention would hone in on that particular
| sensation, heightening my awareness and deepening the experience.
| It felt as though that one word added a new layer to my sensory
| palette
|
| Love how nuances in language can carve out niches in our
| perception, spotlighting elements of our environment that might
| otherwise blend into the background
| flangola7 wrote:
| Attention is all you need!
| dfawcus wrote:
| Your simply mentioning the sensation was enough to distinctly
| bring it to mind. Having grown up by a beach, I've experienced
| it a lot, from childhood through to as an adult at different
| beaches around the world.
|
| While a specific word for it may be useful, I don't see how it
| is necessary as an aid to recall of the sensation.
| jerjerjer wrote:
| Same thing as a meme - it compresses the information and
| allows an easier (and so more vivid) recall.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Well, now that we all know there is a word for it, we can
| evaluate whether our senses were calibrated and amplified for
| that specific thing.
|
| We won't know it while this thread is active, but if you go
| to the beach in a week, and exclaim "wow, this feyli thing
| _is_ pretty nice ", then you'll know that your senses for
| feeling the "sand between your toes as waves recede on a
| beach" is heightened.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I don't think they said it's necessary. They said it helps to
| isolate it in consciousness from the countless other
| phenomena you're experiencing every second of every day.
| psychphysic wrote:
| Reminds me of mindfulness practices, having a word for it,
| and linking that word to a trip to the Maldives is likely
| what makes it so intensely memorable.
| politelemon wrote:
| I did s a search for 'feyli' and it shows that the term is used
| for the ethnic wear in Maldives.
|
| > Feyli (the ethnic attire of the Maldivian) was worn both by
| men and women in Maldives during the monarchy.
|
| Is it the same word used for both things, or maybe a slightly
| different word?
| tired-turtle wrote:
| For reference, here's a Dhivehi-English dictionary.
| https://twothousandisles.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/09/dhiv...
|
| (It lists only ethnic wear as a translation for "feyli.")
| psychphysic wrote:
| Hah now I'm picturing like that urban legend about Yucatan
| meaning "I don't know".
|
| Op is being asked by natives of he'd like some local
| clothes while he repeatedly jams his foot into the wet sand
| and points at it.
| arrowsmith wrote:
| It's not really an "urban legend" that Yucatan means "I
| don't know"; it 's a credible theory that linguists take
| seriously.
|
| You might be thinking of "kangaroo", which is also said
| to originate from a local word for "I don't know", but in
| that case it's not a serious hypothesis.
| almostnormal wrote:
| "Vasistas" in french originated from "was ist das?"
| (what's that?) in german.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transom_(architecture)
| rvba wrote:
| > "The forest of Skund was indeed enchanted, which was
| nothing unusual on the Disc, and was also the only forest in
| the whole universe to be called -- in the local language --
| Your Finger You Fool, which was the literal meaning of the
| word Skund.
|
| > The reason for this is regrettably all too common. When the
| first explorers from the warm lands around the Circle Sea
| travelled into the chilly hinterland they filled in the blank
| spaces on their maps by grabbing the nearest native, pointing
| at some distant landmark, speaking very clearly in a loud
| voice, and writing down whatever the bemused man told them.
| Thus were immortalised in generations of atlases such
| geographical oddities as Just A Mountain, I Don't Know, What?
| and, of course, Your Finger You Fool."
|
| --Terry Prachett
| PunchTornado wrote:
| as my old fried Witty used to say, the limits of my language
| are the limits of my world.
| wilg wrote:
| Do languages have limits? I mean, the poster explained the
| situation in English. How much does terseness matter I
| wonder?
| grey-area wrote:
| Clearly they do have limits.
| [deleted]
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| There is a subtle, but important, difference between memory and
| recall.
|
| One is data, the other is a function. I'm not sure how we could
| possibly measure memory directly. The only thing we can measure
| is some form of interaction with it, which means we are measuring
| the interaction itself.
|
| Our best understanding of memory (AFAIK) is that _it is
| constructed just-in-time_ by the process of recall. So does the
| distinction matter? How much of memory is tied to comprehension?
| Having a word for something is one method of comprehension, but
| there are others. What happens when the word is provided later?
|
| We know that human behavior tends to be driven by narrative. I
| would be interested to see a similar study where unique
| expressions are isolated. Do people with a particular/specific
| way of talking about something _do_ it differently?
| canvascritic wrote:
| Nice. To liken it to computers, memory is a bit like storage,
| while recall is the act of retrieving what's stored. The
| concept of memory being JITed is intriguing. it's reminiscent
| of the dynamic nature of human cognition.
|
| I always like to think about how comprehension influences
| memory. Like. Can we truly remember something if we don't
| understand it? Or more precisely can the data be committed to
| memory losslessly. And to your point about the provision of
| words later, it brings to mind studies on the Sapir Worf
| hypothesis, ie how language might shape thought.
| gumballindie wrote:
| This is like that "research" where speakers of different
| languages percieve time in different ways.
|
| I am not sure who funds this type of garbage but it shows that
| "science" is rifle with ridiculous findings.
|
| Suppose their "findings" are true - do I as a dual language
| speaker remember visual scenes in both ways? Laughable at best.
| Expressing visual scenes in different ways is obvious, since
| different languages have different constructs, but that shouldn't
| be comflated with experience.
| Tainnor wrote:
| > I am not sure who funds this type of garbage but it shows
| that "science" is rifle with ridiculous findings.
|
| This is just such a bad-faith, effortless, shallow dismissal.
| If you wish to criticise the study, please do it on the basis
| of the methodology and not just because you think that somehow
| it can't be true.
|
| > This is like that "research" where speakers of different
| languages percieve time in different ways.
|
| This was a claim put forward by Benjamin Lee Whorf in the 1940s
| which has been discredited since at least the 80s:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopi_time_controversy
|
| Also, it was always conjectural and never grounded in solid
| empiric evidence in the way that is at least attempted in the
| article you're criticising here (whether successfully or not).
| And for good reason: at that time, linguistics simply wasn't
| yet as developed a field as it is now and doing experiments
| like we can do them today would probably have been hard to
| conceive. For all his faults, Benjamin Lee Whorf is one of the
| fathers of modern linguistics, and it's not right to criticise
| him based on today's standards.
| azernik wrote:
| Generally research of this type finds that dual language
| speakers' remembered details depend on which language they've
| been primed with (ie made to use or listen to just before the
| activity).
|
| It's also much more subtle than the splashy headlines indicate
| - it's about which details you're more likely to remember, not
| some fundamentally different experience of the world.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Details are subjective, and that can be influenced by culture
| and language. For instance if in my culture it's more
| important to know the colour of your pants then i will
| remember that. If in your culture the colour of your hat is
| more important you will remember that. But a person's culture
| changes, and that person can still speak a particular
| language but memories be influenced by a different pattern.
| Correlation and casualisation etc.
| LordGrey wrote:
| I wonder how a group of aphantasics would affect the results.
| Everyones' mechanisms for remembering things is undoubtedly
| different, but aphantasia means you don't have mental imagery to
| consult. Does this mean that aphantasics rely more on linguistic
| cues and connections?
| prismatix wrote:
| As an aphantasic, I anecdotally do rely heavily on linguistic
| cues in my memories.
| passion__desire wrote:
| I think using a language is like constructing a scene graph
| (computer graphics). Using language i.e. a scene graph
| representaiton to manipulate ideas and thoughts is far more
| efficient and faster. Just a guess. Different languages based
| on primitives might construct different scene graphs.
| nomind wrote:
| https://medium.com/@uchtchi_buchtchi/breaking-binary-barrier...
| INTPenis wrote:
| Knowing more languages helps your memory, wow, who woulda thunk
| it. :D
|
| I speak 4 languages that I got for free, without studying them.
| Just by being an immigrant, and connected to different european
| countries. This type of multilingualism is quite common in
| central europe. I remember meeting kids in Brussels who could
| speak 10 or 12 languages even, insane!
|
| And yes I can confirm that it sure feels like my memory is very
| good. I often describe it as a gift and a curse. Ignorance is
| bliss takes on a powerful meaning when you can't forget things.
| [deleted]
| wmlive wrote:
| >>Language can have a powerful effect on how people experience
| events. Here, we examine how the languages people speak guide
| attention and influence what they remember from a visual scene.
| When hearing a word, listeners activate other similar-sounding
| words before settling on the correct target. We tested whether
| this linguistic coactivation during a visual search task changes
| memory for objects. Bilinguals and monolinguals remembered
| English competitor words that overlapped phonologically with a
| spoken English target better than control objects without name
| overlap. High Spanish proficiency also enhanced memory for
| Spanish competitors that overlapped across languages. We conclude
| that linguistic diversity partly accounts for differences in
| higher cognitive functions such as memory, with multilinguals
| providing a fertile ground for studying the interaction between
| language and cognition.<<
| hackernewds wrote:
| They say often that French are bad at quick math and Chinese
| are better due to the nature of their numeric system
| plaguuuuuu wrote:
| Linguistic differences. About understanding fractions: In
| English it's "2 out of 5". In Chinese, Korean and possibly
| some other languages, it's "from 5, 2". Apparently just a
| quirk of language but results in a difference in ability to
| compute fractions, so there you go.
|
| Also in Chinese, reciting the times tables are shorter and
| (unproven) probably easier to memorise, "3 1 3, 3 2 6, 3 3
| 9". Although I'm not sure why that can't be done in English
| either.
| mahatofu wrote:
| There's definitely valid research on higher perfect pitch
| apprehension in Chinese speakers ( relative to linguistic
| tonalities ).
| tgv wrote:
| Unsurprisingly, that's not what the headline suggests.
|
| And, as it turns out, they measured something else indeed. They
| measured recall of a visual scene after guiding subjects in
| different ways. English speakers were guided with e.g. clock
| and clown or clock and mirror. The first pair have some
| overlap, so (as theory suggests) subjects start looking at
| both. The second pair has no overlap, so the word clock doesn't
| make the subject scan for the mirror. Then they tested recall
| on these pictures. There are differences between people with
| different language proficiency, but they are small.
|
| So it doesn't show that speakers of different languages
| remember visual scenes differently, but rather that people only
| recognize objects from partially heard words quickly in the
| language(s) they're proficient in.
|
| I wish they'd stop clickbaiting for this kind of technical
| studies.
| fouc wrote:
| Hey, looks like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-
| Whorf_hypothesis has finally been proven. Joking :-)
| Tainnor wrote:
| The Sapir-Whorf hypotheses remains contested. IMHO everyone who
| isn't completely clueless has to agree that the strong version
| of SW is without merit (language doesn't seem to impose hard
| limits on our thinking), but those who have seen the evidence
| (e.g. in the field of spatial recognition) would also be hard
| pressed to deny that linguistic features do mirror cultural
| practices and points of view.
|
| Of course then the argument is whether the culture determines
| the language or the language determines the culture, but I find
| that a silly debate: clearly the two influence other in turn,
| shifts in culture will eventually be manifested in language but
| language is a very efficient medium to transmit habitual
| thinking patterns too.
| peterfirefly wrote:
| I wonder if that will replicate...
| fourier456 wrote:
| I can't wait for like 2-3 years from now when we can explore this
| with vision-GPTs trained with different languages.
| pstuart wrote:
| Radiolab has a great episode on how language literally defines
| our reality.
|
| https://www.radiolab.org/podcast/91725-words
| alganet wrote:
| That's not a surprise.
|
| I mean, it's pretty difficult to have a thought without using
| language. When we watch a scene, we kinda describe it
| automatically using words, and that description is bound to be
| affected by the language used.
|
| I wonder what was the everyday experience of a human before
| language. It must have been pretty different from the world we
| experience as literate monkeys.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The goal of scientific work, is often not to confirm whether
| some effect exists - its often obvious it is, but to quantify
| the strength of the effect.
|
| They have done exactly this in this in the study, in fact,
| along a number of dimensions. Though I won't comment on the
| validity of their statistics.
| Swizec wrote:
| > it's pretty difficult to have a thought without using
| language
|
| You get to be today's 10,000! (xkcd reference)
|
| _Not everyone has an internal monologue_! 50% to 60% people
| experience their thoughts completely nonverbally. There isn't a
| voice constantly narrating their lives. Some people don't even
| process words as words but add pictures instead.
|
| Best part: the two groups don't realize the other group even
| exists. We all think everyone thinks in the same way as us.
|
| Sauce: https://www.iflscience.com/people-with-no-internal-
| monologue...
| alganet wrote:
| I heard this many times, but I'm guarded about the
| conclusions. This whole thing depends on people stating how
| they think.
|
| When I say "I have an internal voice", some people might
| misunderstand this phenomenon as something more than it is.
| For example, one might hear it and think I _actually_
| experience an audible narrator.
|
| I have an internal monologue, but I don't experience an
| audible voice. It's not a sensory thing, but there is a clear
| "lookup word, form phrase" thing going on internally, in
| which language plays an essential role. If I wasn't curious
| about how that works, or interested in the subject, perhaps I
| wouldn't have noticed that it is there.
|
| Similarly, I know I have some picture based thoughts as well.
| I can't avoid but have it. Maybe if I was more interested on
| that, I would have noticed it more proeminently than my
| language-based stuff.
|
| In other words, I do believe we have varying degrees of
| mental models, but I just can't grasp how can an experiment
| could validate someone thinks "completely nonverbally". The
| brain doesn't even have a single "language area", it's spread
| all over the place and can be highly plastic depending on the
| individual. How can we even measure how a person thinks?
| [deleted]
| tekla wrote:
| Being unable to debate with yourself in your head must really
| suck.
| retrac wrote:
| This claim has always been very odd to me. My own thinking
| is, rather obviously, _both_. I have an inner monologue but
| it 's not entirely word-based. There are mental visual
| images, and I often gesture with my hands reorganizing
| imaginary collections of objects while arguing with myself.
| There's also words going on too.
|
| There is also thinking through proprioception. The sense of
| awareness of the relative placement of the body in space.
| That, like the other ways of thinking, also overlaps quite a
| lot with both visual thinking (moving around imaginary
| objects) and lingual thinking (writing words in the air idly
| or sub-vocalization). It is probably not appreciated enough
| as a mode of thought.
|
| Anyway, I suspect it's something of a false dichotomy, and
| it's not a binary/multi-way clean split, but that most people
| think like I do -- in a mix of modes, to varying degrees,
| using all their senses, all their models of the world,
| simultaneously. But the assumption that I'm relatively normal
| is the usual conceit here, isn't it? :)
| Swizec wrote:
| Visual Thinking is a great book that goes more into this.
|
| Yes it's a spectrum and different modes of thinking are
| better for different tasks. The author of Visual Thinking
| describes 3 types: linear language thinking, abstract
| visualizer thinking (common to engineers, mathematicians
| etc), and object visualizer thinking (common to artists,
| machinists, etc). Most people can do all 3 with different
| levels of proficiency/comfort, but only 1 is usually the
| primary.
|
| The dichotomy I mentioned is about having or not having
| that inner monologue/narrator.
| alganet wrote:
| To me, this section of the article deserves more
| attention:
|
| > They confessed they had thought it was a fictional
| concept made up as a narrative device in the TV show
| Dexter
|
| I imagine a person saying "I have an internal narrator",
| and other person thinking "shit, I don't hear stuff like
| TV shows, that person is different". A misunderstanding.
|
| I can bet that if the expression "internal narrator" was
| changed to "an internal voice that you can feel but
| cannot hear", more people would say they have it, and
| those poll numbers would change.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| It's pretty close to hearing. Maybe 75% of the way there?
| Obviously it's a bit different than hearing with your
| ears but it's got almost all of the same information -
| except positional.
| schrodinger wrote:
| But I _do_ hear it, accent, inflection, pauses, and all.
| Not through my ears of course but a very close
| simulation. I don't relate to the inner monologue as
| pictures reference at all!
| alganet wrote:
| Ok then, let's rephrase to "an internal voice that you
| can feel, but it's not heard by your ears". It's not
| sensory.
|
| The phrase doesn't matter. What I want to highlight, is
| that I can never describe my internal thoughts exactly.
| There's always a chance for misunderstanding (me not
| being able to put in words my thought process, or you not
| being able to translate my description to a meaningful
| experience to you).
|
| If a better method for determining this appears (eg.
| scanning some brain areas), then I could be convinced.
| Otherwise, it's all anedoctal.
|
| At this point of the discussion, it's time for p-zombies:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
|
| This thought experiment expresses well the problem of
| asserting someone else's consciousness experience. It
| can't be done yet.
| [deleted]
| ajuc wrote:
| When you try to catch a ball playing some sport are you
| thinking "I need to catch this ball", or are you imagining its
| path and yourself moving to catch it? I'm usually talking to
| myself in my mind, but I can't imagine doing it when speed is
| important, thinking with words takes like 10 times longer.
|
| Or when you look at a photo and think which person is taller -
| are you thinking in words? Cause I'm imagining cutting and
| pasting one person next to the other and comparing them
| visually.
|
| When you try to remember a song melody you probably don't use
| words to describe the sounds (it was c, g, e, d, ..) you
| probably imagine the melody in your head, right?
|
| I think most (all?) people use both language and other modes of
| thinking, just the proportions are person-specific.
| posterboy wrote:
| "Got it!" is indeed a very common expression in this
| situation. It does not exclude locomotion in parallel. We
| also here a lot of "ugh"s and "ah"s in Tennis or Martial
| Arts.
|
| This is a slippery slope where some will say this is no real
| word and that's not syntax unless you define language in
| fivethousand words on normed paper all while catching the
| damn ball. That's just them crying _look at me_.
| alganet wrote:
| I agree. There's a lot of things we do which doesn't require
| language.
|
| It's often there for me though, like a default. I don't think
| "left leg, right leg" when I'm walking, and I don't think
| "geez, I'm walking now", but when I'm walking my go-to
| thinking defaults to some internal monologue: "gonna buy some
| food", "can I cross the road?", etc.
|
| When I go to bed this is more evident. It's silent, dark, and
| all senses are numb. This is when the internal voice gets
| more noticeable. I just can't get rid of it, until the very
| moment I go to sleep.
| ajuc wrote:
| I default to monologue too and it has some serious
| disadvantages. I always had problems remembering to do
| stuff I "told myself" to do with some delay.
|
| Later in life I learnt a trick from my wife who uses
| visualization for this. For example I need to buy something
| tomorrow after work - so I'll imagine myself stepping out
| of the bus, turning to shop instead of going directly home,
| and then I'll imagine myself passing by the shelf in the
| mall where the thing is and taking it to the basket. And
| like magic - I get an "internal notification" with this
| fake future memory when I step out of the bus, and then
| another when I pass by that shelf in the shop.
|
| It's like magic :) Makes remembering stuff so much easier.
| Ekaros wrote:
| The title feels weird compared to article.
|
| Not that I don't believe there isn't large cultural differences
| between remembering visual scenes.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Reminds of Julian Jayne's essay, where he says that remembering
| is essentially re-narrating memories to yourself.
| beebeepka wrote:
| I think it goes beyond simple rearranging. We actively change
| them. Maybe not many people are immune to this
| taylorius wrote:
| "But every person has their own encyclopedia written, which
| grows out from each soul, composed from birth onward,
| hundreds of thousands of pages pressing into each other and
| yet there's air between them! Like trembling leaves in a
| forest. A book of contradictions. What's in there is revised
| by the moment; the images touch themselves up, the words
| flicker. A wave washes through the entire text, followed by
| the next wave, and the next . . ." - Tomas Transtromer.
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(page generated 2023-08-19 23:00 UTC)