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.<p>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<p>Love how nuances in language can carve out niches in our perception, spotlighting elements of our environment that might otherwise blend into the background
There is a subtle, but important, difference between memory and recall.<p>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.<p>Our best understanding of memory (AFAIK) is that <i>it is constructed just-in-time</i> 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?<p>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 <i>do</i> it differently?
Hey, looks like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir-Whorf_hypothesis</a> has finally been proven. Joking :-)
This doesn't surprise me because I remember reading about how speakers of different languages process text differently. For example, given a passage of text and a simple task (Count the number of occurrences of the letter "e" in the text) people who's first language is French will frequently undercount, because they have become accustomed to the letter e being elided in many places in their native language.<p>This was set as a task for a group of us during a diversity training at Goldman. It so happend I was in a group that included a couple of French quant phds. You can imagine their extreme bewilderment by miscounting in such a simple task, but this error seems to be a heuristic that is somehow wired into the perception of words when learning to read.<p>Having accepted that speakers of different languages understand visual information in text differently, it seems not to be that big a leap to accept that visual memory would also work differently.
They are using a spoken word to prime the subject, so the title is highly misleading:<p>In visual search experiments, participants typically hear a word and find the matching item among an array of object images. Crucially, the other objects in the array can be manipulated to resemble the target item visually or linguistically. For example, when asked to find a beaker among other objects, participants look more at objects whose names overlap (e.g., beetle) or rhyme (e.g., speaker) with the target word than at unrelated objects (e.g., carriage)
»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.«
That's not a surprise.<p>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.<p>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.
> 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...<p>This conclusion sounds like quite the leap.<p>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.
Radiolab has a great episode on how language literally defines our reality.<p><a href="https://www.radiolab.org/podcast/91725-words" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.radiolab.org/podcast/91725-words</a>
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?
certainly true, also the increase in vocabulary effects how we explain and remember things.
When we recall things, we try to describe them in words and how we describe it helps in re-remembering things. If we do not have enough vocab to describe certain event we cannot interpret to someone no matter how clearly it is stamped in our memory. And this consequently effects us how we remember things while we revised it in our words.
The title feels weird compared to article.<p>Not that I don't believe there isn't large cultural differences between remembering visual scenes.
This is like that "research" where speakers of different languages percieve time in different ways.<p>I am not sure who funds this type of garbage but it shows that "science" is rifle with ridiculous findings.<p>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.
Knowing more languages helps your memory, wow, who woulda thunk it. :D<p>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!<p>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.