The language you speak can change your perception of time, a new study has revealed. This is due to time words in your native language.
In English, one can talk about a “long” day, while the Greeks talk about a “full day” . These tiny variations seem to change our perception of time, scientists say.
A team of researchers from Stellenbosch University in South Africa and Lancaster University in the UK say their work also shows that being bilingual encourages the human brain to think in new ways.
Panos Athanasopoulos, a member of the team from Lancaster University, said on Mic: ” Language can transform our perceptions and it essentially makes them experience time in a particular way.”
In one test, a computer animation was projected slowly in a straight upward ascending line. It is shown with 40 Spanish speakers and 40 Swedish speakers. All animations last only 3 seconds, but the line is sometimes increased a lot, sometimes a little.
Language can affect timing. (Photo: Unsplash).
The researchers predict that because the Swedes talk about time in terms of distances, it will be difficult for them to accurately estimate the elapsed time. And the scientists were right.
Meanwhile, Spanish speakers, who talk about time in terms of volume (for example, they often say a “small” destruction rather than a “short” one ) perceive time in terms of time. They realized that 3 seconds had passed no matter how much the straight line went up.
Linguist Emanuel Bylund and researcher, at the University of Stellenbosch, explained in Popular Science: “Swedes tend to think that, if the straight line covers longer distances, it will take more time. Meanwhile, Spanish speakers aren’t fooled by that. They seem to think that, no matter how far the line goes, it still takes time to go up.”
In another experiment, participants were shown animations of a vase being gradually filled with money. The length of the animation is fixed, but the jars are filled with varying amounts of coins.
And this time – sure enough – the Spanish speakers had trouble estimating the passage of time. Interestingly, when the language-specific examples were removed, the volunteers judged the time much better.
To get more details about what happened, the scientists continued to conduct experiments with 74 volunteers who could speak both languages: Spanish and Swedish. These people were shown the same animations as before.
After the experiment, the same results were obtained. When the instructions were displayed in Swedish, the volunteers were easily fooled by the pictures of the line. And when the instructions were in Spanish, the image of the jar being filled interfered with their perception of time.
But we should note that this change is not large. The researchers only say that “difficult distinctions” are influenced by language, when the line length is not too long or short, or when the jar is not too full or empty.
So what’s going on here? The team suspects that, if we grow up with a language that implies a greater length means more time (“a long day”) , our brains automatically assume that : a longer line takes more time to draw.
Language can affect our most basic feelings.
“We guess this is an empirical bias ,” Bylund said. “They have to do with the fact that the longer we travel through space the longer it takes us.”
“Even children who have not yet mastered language recognize the connection between physical length and length of time. It can be something innate and it can also be something we learn. when traveling through space,” he added.
The experiment also provides evidence that speaking more than one language can help upgrade certain parts of the brain. In this case, it allows us to think about time in two different ways.
Athanasopoulos explains: “By learning a new language, you suddenly become attuned to dimensions of perception that you have never known before. Bilingualism seems to have the power to help us switch between the two ways. thinking, which shows how profoundly language affects the brain.”
“Language can affect our most basic senses, including emotions, visual perception, and now also our sense of time,” he adds.