Semantic and Orthographic Satiation

I’m certain most of us have experienced this. Say a word repeatedly and soon it loses its meaning. What? What? What? What? What? What? What? Whatttt? Whattt? Waaaaat? Whaaat? Whaaaat??

Did the word suddenly disintegrate? Become strange, incomprehensible, or meaningless? If so, what just happened to you is nothing new. The phenomenon was first described in The American Journal of Psychology in 1907. It was the research topic and dissertation of Dr Leon James in 1962. He demonstrated through several linked experiments that when people repeat a word over and over, the word loses meaning. He was able to trace this effect in several areas including verbal learning, problem solving, bilingualism, popular songs, advertising, and stuttering.

“It’s a kind of a fatigue,” James says. “It’s called reactive inhibition: When a brain cell fires, it takes more energy to fire the second time, and still more the third time, and finally the fourth time it won’t even respond unless you wait a few seconds. So that kind of reactive inhibition that was known as an effect on brain cells is what attracted me to an idea that if you repeat a word, the meaning in the word keeps being repeated, and then it becomes refractory, or more resistant to being elicited again and again.”

Now let’s have some fun with it!

Then there’s a similar phenomenon called orthographic satiation. It involves the written word. You’re typing, then without further ado, the word looks all wrong (let’s use ‘handle’). You’ve written ‘handle’ many times in your life. But now for some reason, it looks absurd. Handle, handle, handle, handle. Handle. Did I spell it wrong? Handle. No, that can’t be right. Handle, handle, handle, handle. It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong, you say, shaking your head. You stop what you’re doing and ask for assistance.

“Hey, is this how you spell, ‘handle’?”
“Huh?”
“This doesn’t look right. Is ‘handle’ spelled correctly?”
“Yes!”
“You’re sure?”
“It looks all wrong!”
“Hmmm, I’m pretty sure.”
“I better look it up…”