What do cows drink? Your first answer was probably to answer “milk.” And then, depending on how familiar you are with bovine diets, you realized that, wait, it's the calves that drink milk—adult cows drink water. And what does it tell us about how our brains store and process language?
The leading theories of language processing have to do with “connectionist” models of language. The idea is that when you learn a word, it gets connected to similar words and concepts, so that it’s easier to recall when you need it. These connections form every time you use the word, from what’s going on in the context at that moment. When you hear one of the linked words, the other one gets activated, so you’re ready to talk about the general topics of dairy products and farm animals. It would take a lot longer to get to milk from cow if they weren’t connected, and since you’re often talking about them at the same time, it saves time!
As soon as you hear “cows” in “What do cows drink?” your brain goes “Oh hey, cows! We might need the word milk soon, I’ll get that ready.” And then when you’ve heard the whole question, your brain jumps in with “Milk! You can drink milk!” Since this one question is a very rare case where cows and milk don’t go together, the shortcut remains strong, and you’ll make the same mistake every time.
In fact, we can go even younger—it turns out that babies are making connections between words before they're even saying them. After only 18 months of being alive, the baby has figured out that connecting words. Managing to find one of the most widely used language shortcuts in less than two years is an impressive accomplishment.
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