There is a close relationship between language and memory, since of course whenever you use words and grammar, you have to access your memory for those words and that grammar. If you couldn't remember anything, you couldn't learn language to begin with.
The relationship between language and memory is not well understood, partly because they tend to be studied by different people, though there are a few labs squarely interested in the relationship between language and memory, such as the Brain and Language Lab at Georgetown University.
This week, I posted a new experiment, "The Language & Memory Test", which explores the relationship between memory and language. The experiment consists of two components. One is a memory test. At the end, you will see your score and how it compares with other people who took the test. This test is surprisingly hard for how simple it seems.
In the other part, you will try to learn to use some new words. We'll be studying the relationship between different aspects of your memory performance and how you learn these new words. As always, there will be a bit more explanation at the end of the experiment. When the experiment is done and the results are known, there will be a full description of them and what we learned here at the blog and at GamesWithWords.org.
Try the Language & Memory test here.
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1 comment:
In order to augment the relevance of your fictitious word implementation test I'd like you to consider the next example as a possible falsification.
"She was angry at her, so she left."
The ambiguity of natural language (as opposed to mathematical or logical languages) makes it impossible to single out one defined implication here.
You might consider both variations:
"I was angry at her, so I left."
"I was angry at her, so she left."
I guess it's all about semantics, and even more so in English, which is a very weakly inflected language. Therefore provinding less clues to the user of this language.
Granted, you selected somewhat less ambiguous examples.
Yet from a logical point of view it is doubtful to see all supposed causes and effects as relevant implications.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, I might have overlooked something important here.
My only motive is improvent.
So if you can correct me here it will serve the same goal.
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