Semantic satiation ゲシュタルト崩壊

gesutaruto hōkai · from English

What is semantic satiation?

Semantic satiation is when a word repeated or stared at many times temporarily seems to lose its meaning; Japanese calls a visual version ゲシュタルト崩壊.

The term was coined by psychologist Leon Jakobovits James in 1962. Learners of Chinese and Japanese often experience the visual version: after writing a character many times, it suddenly looks wrong or alien. Japanese uses ゲシュタルト崩壊 (Gestalt collapse) for this.

Examples

Saying spoon fifty times; writing 借 thirty times until it looks invented; ゲシュタルト崩壊 gesutaruto hōkai with kanji like 傘

Kungfucius says: Write a character fifty times and it starts looking like a spider. That is science, not you.