Psycholinguistics: How Language Shapes Our Attention

Psycholinguistics is a science at the intersection of psychology and linguistics. One of the latest discoveries in this field is that the language we speak influences where we direct our attention.

For example, when English speakers hear the word “candle,” they also look at “candy,” since both words share the same first syllable. Additionally, bilinguals pay attention not only to words that sound similar in one language, but also to words with similar sounds in both languages they know. When Russian-English bilinguals hear the word “marker,” they also look at “marka” (stamp), even though “marker” and “marka” are not phonetically related in English.

Even more striking is that speakers of different languages look at different things, even when they are not using language at all. In one experiment, scientists asked participants to find an object they had previously seen among a group of similar items. It turned out that their eye movements differed depending on the language they spoke. For example, when searching for a “clock,” English speakers also looked at a “cloud,” while Spanish speakers focused on a “gift,” because the Spanish words for “clock” and “gift”—”reloj” and “regalo”—sound similar.

This effect works not only within a single language, but also between different languages spoken by bilinguals. For instance, when Spanish-English bilinguals hear the word “duck,” they also look at a “shovel,” because the Spanish words for “duck” and “shovel”—”pato” and “pala”—sound alike.

The way the brain organizes and processes information can trigger a cascade of effects throughout our entire cognitive system. This joint activation is not limited to spoken languages. People who know both a spoken and a sign language are also influenced by these effects. For example, bilinguals who know spoken English and American Sign Language (ASL), when hearing the word “paper,” also look at “cheese,” because the ASL signs for “paper” and “cheese” share three out of four components (handshape, location, and orientation, but not movement).

What do these results show? The main conclusion is that language is highly interactive, not only between words and concepts, but also in how it affects information processing in many other areas—such as vision, attention, and cognitive control. What we look at, pay attention to, and notice every day is influenced by the language we speak. This connection can even be directly measured.

The practical implications of this research touch on consumer behavior (what we notice on supermarket shelves), military operations (orientation on the battlefield), and art (what naturally draws our gaze). In other words, the statement that language shapes how you see the world should be taken not just as a metaphor, but quite literally—even down to the mechanics of eye movement.