Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 109 posts

Re: Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

#91

Post by yesco »

Lamad123 wrote: post #90
psychphysic wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Very "intensely memorable" feelings/things don't have names!! The smell of old grass or barnes or rain on dry soil or kinds of breeze at certain temperature and level of humidity.. Many of these random things without names are still there and don't require words.

No one said they were required, just that words may help induce mindfulness of these sensations

Re: Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

#93

Post by Tryffel »

magicalhippo wrote: post #67
azernik wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My dad taught our native language to immigrants. I mentioned to him I'd read about a research paper where they'd conducted an experiment which indicated that toddlers recalled events using the words they knew at the time of the event. That is, if they had played with a ball before they learned the word for ball, they would not use the word ball when they were later asked to recall the play session. My dad responded t…

This is super interesting! Got any resources or articles about what your was talking about?

Re: Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

#94

Post by seanhunter »

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.

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.

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.

Re: Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

#95

Post by ralferoo »

plaguuuuuu wrote: post #60
hackernewds wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say often that French are bad at quick math and Chinese are better due to the nature of their numeric system

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 t…

> "3 1 3, 3 2 6, 3 3 9". Although I'm not sure why that can't be done in English

It was a long time ago for me now, but I learned the times tables (using your example) as "three ones'r three, three twos'r six, three three's'r nine" etc. Seems like it's just the addition of a single "zrr" syllable after both numbers to me, and to me that seems easier to say than e.g. "3 2 6", maybe just because it's an automatic reflex to add the extra sound and not adding it makes it seem just a stream of numbers out of context.

Re: Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

#96

Post by braindead_in »

PunchTornado wrote: post #9
canvascritic wrote: post #3

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…

as my old fried Witty used to say, the limits of my language are the limits of my world.

The quote "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world" is attributed to Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian-British philosopher. He expressed this idea in his work "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus."

It's one of Sw Sarvapriyananda's favourite quotes. Wittgenstein was quite Vedantic it seems.

Re: Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

#97

Post by magicalhippo »

Tryffel wrote: post #93
magicalhippo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My dad taught our native language to immigrants. I mentioned to him I'd read about a research paper where they'd conducted an experiment which indicated that toddlers recalled events using the words they knew at the time of the event. That is, if they had played with a ball before they learned the word for ball, they would not use the word ball when they were later asked to recall the play session. My dad responded t…

This is super interesting! Got any resources or articles about what your was talking about?

I read about it in American Scientist IIRC, my as for my dad I don't know but he portrayed it more or less as common knowledge in the field.

I'll do some digging, check back in a day or two.

Re: Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

#98

Post by _thisdot »

ajuc wrote: post #26
alganet wrote: post #6

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.

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 a…

The difference is what you imagine when someone says “catch the ball”. In my language, there is a single common word for catch, hold and grab.

(Catch the ball, hold the rope, grab the stick).

So if someone said “catch the ball” to me in English, I’d imagine a ball coming at me that I need to catch. But if someone said the same sentence in my native language I’d imagine holding on to a ball that was handed to me

Re: Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

#99

Post by lazyant »

alganet wrote: post #6

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.

>I mean, it's pretty difficult to have a thought without using language.

I have an internal monologue but I also have thoughts without language. Like if I think I have to buy groceries, I picture myself going to the supermarket without words.

Re: Speakers of different languages remember visual scenes differently

#100

Post by tgv »

MrVandemar wrote: post #70
hackernewds wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say often that French are bad at quick math and Chinese are better due to the nature of their numeric system

It might educational systems at play here. I've never been to China, and have no idea if this is wide-spread — I saw a documentary on children in China being taught mathematics at an early age using an abacus . Eventually, they remove the abacus but the child still mimes using it. And then gradually this disappears too. Essentially they're training their muscle-memory to do their maths for them. It was quite extraord…

Or a ton of other factors. I don't think there's a convincing study that shows an effect of language on e.g. arithmetic. There is a whole bunch of studies where culture, environment, status, income, education, discrimination, age, etc. are confounds.
Post reply on HN