ADHD

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Specific languages helping at focusing? (thebrainbin.org)

submitted 6 days ago by Auster@thebrainbin.org to c/adhd@lemmy.world

6 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Recently, by accident, I set the subtitles of some anime to Spanish, and to my surprise, for the first time in who knows how long, I could focus fully on an episode. Tested over the days, and indeed it was helping.

After that, it got me wondering why.

Being able to understand some Japanese, the impression I get is that it's in a weird position where it's too straight to the point and too verbose at the same time. Meanwhile, in languages like Portuguese and English, it seems to me as if the speaker needs to walk around ideas a lot to explain them. And almost like they'd be in the other side of the spectrum, languages like Spanish (oddly enough despite being Portuguese's sister language) and the Scandinavian ones feel very straight to the point.

Perhaps then, less information added in helps at not straining one's focus, specially when the person's focus is already on the weaker side?

And going by that, it makes me think, if the person is struggling at focusing at something, despite the medium, maybe changing to a less verbose language (when possible and the person knows the language) could help?

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[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Might also be a context switching thing

Like, when I have a dedicated space to go for work, then I find that really helps me to get into the right headspace. My productivity has always been shit when I've lived somewhere that doesn't have enough space to do this.

Maybe what's happening is that the different language forces you to be in a different headspace, which for some reason, helps you to focus better.

This theory is weakened somewhat by the fact that your mother tongue is Portuguese, and you don't find your focus to be improved by English.

It does feel intuitively plausible to me that there is some underlying linguistic thing going on here. There might be some research studying the link between different languages and ADHD experiences, because it does seem like there's something interesting there. If there isn't currently any such research, I have no doubt that it's just because it hasn't been done yet (the wide domain of "academic research on autism and/or ADHD that respects the personhood of the people being studied" is unfortunately, a relatively recent development, but I have been pleased to see that it has been growing rapidly in recent years). If I find anything, I'll report back (which may be in many weeks or months)

[–] TheBluePillock@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

This probably at least plays a factor. It's been researched, and people actually have different personalities in different languages. It's a very individual thing, can be more mild or more pronounced, can vary over time, etc. It's like a slightly split personality you access at will without realizing it (unless you pay attention).

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

If Spanish is not your mother tongue and you’re not “fully fluent” (by which I mean: have the ability to think in that language without any sort of mental translation layers): perhaps because your brain has to engage and work somewhat harder subconsciously to parse and understand it, compared to a more reflexive understanding of?

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 2 points 5 days ago

Sounds possible, if not the issue, at least as an aggravation of it.

(Also a note, Portuguese is my mother language "<.< )

[–] rimu@piefed.social 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Could it be something to do with the order of nouns and verbs in the sentence? English is quite different from the order of others.

[–] Auster@thebrainbin.org 1 points 5 days ago

Hadn't thought about the priority of information which needs to be reserved in mind either. 😯