Why do repeated words lose meaning

Have you experienced semantic satiation? If so, with which words? Total votes: 7 Upvotes: 5 Upvotes percentage: Categories: Interesting Facts.

Related Articles. Amy July 17, ElliotFigueira March 16, Amy October 9, Responses Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. Hey there! Sign in. Forgot your password? Liberman describes a study from the s in which people were told to repeat a common word — like father — up to three times a second for 15 seconds. In this study, people who heard a word and repeated it placed its definition closer to zero than those who said the word just once.

This suggests that repetition of a word really does make us feel like a word has lost some of its meaning — we find it harder to place it in the context of other words. But why does this happen?

James also explored music. He studied pop charts, and found that the songs that came onto the charts fastest—and thus received the most concentrated amount of airtime—were the ones that left the charts altogether the fastest.

The songs that slowly climbed the charts to the top position went out just as slowly, fading away versus burning out. But why do we even like to listen to a song more than once?

To take a deeper dive into the notion of semantic satiation in music, consider the chorus. While James has since turned his attention to other topics, semantic satiation is still analyzed today across a variety of disciplines. Artists have explored the concept. The curious but sadly defunct Semantic Satiation Twitter bot tweeted about it. Marketers are rethinking their sales ploys thanks to the concept.

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