It may have happened to you too, maybe when you were children, repeat a word over and over again only to realize that he had lost the meaning. Now, there are reasons why this happens. The phenomenon whereby a word repeated several times in a row seems to lose its meaning is known as semantic saturation. This curious psychological effect It occurs when the brain, after a continuous repetition of a word, temporarily stops associating it with its original meaning, transforming it into a simple sequence of sounds nonsense. The basis of this mechanism is the functioning of the short term memory and the fact that, if continuously activated, neurons get used to a certain stimulusand consequently their activation to that stimulus will be less.
What is Semantic Saturation: Short-Term Memory and Neural Habituation
There semantic saturation it is the result of a process that involves the short term memory and theneural habituation. When we hear or read a word, our brain activates a network of neurons responsible for its processing and recovery of its meaning from our long-term memory, where our knowledge is stored. However, if this network is stimulated repeatedly in a short time interval, the brain tends to “to overload oneself“, reducing the efficiency with which it processes information. In other words, the word becomes more and more familiarto the point of becoming almost “invisible” for our mind, which is no longer able to immediately connect it to its meaning.
To better understand this phenomenon, it is useful to explore the role of short term memory and of the neural habituation mechanismShort-term memory is the brain’s ability to temporarily hold and manipulate a limited amount of information. When we repeat a word, it is retained in short-term memory, but if the repetition is too frequent, the neurons involved in the process of recognizing and associating the meaning begin to “habituate”. Neural habituation is a process by which the response of neurons to a repetitive stimulus decreases over time. As a result, the word begins to lose its ability to evoke its original meaning.
Semantic saturation is temporary and happens for all languages
As you can easily imagine, the loss of meaning due to semantic saturation is temporary. After a short period of “rest”, the word recovers its original meaning without any difficulty. This is because the brain “resets” the neural network involvedrestoring the normal association function between the word and his meaning.
Semantic saturation is not an isolated phenomenon and It occurs in all languages. It can also be experienced with simple, everyday words, and this makes us notice how our brain is adaptable and at the same time subject to limits temporary in information management. Through semantic saturation we can experience how our mind actually works to maintain a balance between the continuous processing of stimuli and the need for avoid cognitive overload.
