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The average 20-year-old knows between
27,000 and 52,000 different words.
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By age 60, that number averages between
35,000 and 56,000.
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Spoken out loud, most of these words last
less than a second.
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So with every word, the brain has a quick
decision to make:
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which of those thousands of options
matches the signal?
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About 98% of the time, the brain chooses
the correct word.
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But how? Speech comprehension is different
from reading comprehension,
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but it’s similar to sign language
comprehension—
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though spoken word recognition has
been studied more than sign language.
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The key to our ability to understand
speech
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is the brain’s role as a
parallel processor,
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meaning that it can do multiple different
things at the same time.
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Most theories assume that each word
we know is represented
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by a separate processing unit that has
just one job:
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to assess the likelihood of incoming
speech matching that particular word.
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In the context of the brain, the
processing unit that represents a word
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is likely a pattern of firing activity
across a group of neurons
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in the brain’s cortex.
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When we hear the beginning of a word,
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several thousand such units
may become active,
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because with just the beginning of a
word, there are many possible matches.
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Then, as the word goes on, more and
more units register
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that some vital piece of information
is missing and lose activity.
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Possibly well before the end of the word,
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just one firing pattern remains active,
corresponding to one word.
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This is called the ‘recognition point.’
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In the process of honing in on one word,
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the active units suppress
the activity of others,
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saving vital milliseconds.
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Most people can comprehend up to
about 8 syllables per second.
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Yet, the goal is not only
to recognize the word,
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but also to access its stored meaning.
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The brain accesses many possible meanings
at the same time,
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before the word has been fully identified.
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We know this from studies which show
that even upon hearing a word fragment––
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like ‘cap’ ––
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listeners will start to register multiple
possible meanings,
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like captain or capital,
before the full word emerges.
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This suggests that every time we hear a
word
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there’s a brief explosion of meanings in
our minds,
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and by the recognition point the brain
has settled on one interpretation.
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The recognition process moves more
rapidly with a sentence
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that gives us context than in a random
string of words.
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Context also helps guide us towards the
intended meaning of words
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with multiple interpretations, like ‘bat,’
or ‘crane,’
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or in cases of homophones
like ‘no’ or ‘know.’
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For multilingual people, the language
they are listening to is another cue,
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used to eliminate potential words
that don’t match the language context.
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So, what about adding completely new
words to this system?
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Even as adults, we may come across a
new word every few days.
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But if every word is represented as a
fine-tuned pattern of activity
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distributed over many neurons,
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how do we prevent new words from
overwriting old ones?
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We think that to avoid this problem,
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new words are initially stored in a part
of the brain called the hippocampus,
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well away from the main store of words
in the cortex,
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so they don’t share neurons
with others words.
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Then, over multiple nights of sleep,
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the new words gradually transfer over
and interweave with old ones.
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Researchers think this gradual acquisition
process
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helps avoid disrupting existing words.