Saying car keys out loud 'may help you find them'

London, Apr 19 (ANI): An individual's ability to find where they left their car keys or wallet may be significantly increased by saying the objects name out loud, a new study has claimed.

Research indicates that hearing an object's name can improve our effectiveness in searching multiple places for that particular item.

In some instances the technique of talking out loud helped a "visual search" to such an extent that seemingly "invisible" objects suddenly became "visible".

"When participants are asked to find a visual item among distractors (other objects), hearing its name immediately prior to searching improves speed and efficiency of searching for the named object," the Telegraph quoted Gary Lupyan and Daniel Swingley, who co-wrote the research as saying.

"Hearing an object name can...improve the ability to attend simultaneously to multiple regions of space containing the named objects and even make an otherwise invisible object visible," they said.

Academics recognised that people often talk to themselves but that very little was understood about why.

They reasoned that one possible explanation for this "seemingly odd behaviour" was that language was not just a tool for communication.

In addition, researchers claimed that speech could alter "ongoing cognitive and even perceptual processing in nontrivial ways" - effectively allowing us to concentrate better.

In one experiment, scientists chose 26 undergraduates from the University of Wisconsin in the US and asked them to find 20 coloured drawings among a set of 260.

Participants were required to either read the name of the target out load prior to the search or to begin looking for the item without speaking its name.

"Speaking the name of the target immediately prior to the search made search significantly faster and more accurate.

"The benefit of speaking the name of the target may have arisen through an increase in selection confidence once the target was located," they said.

In a second similar trial 12 undergraduates from the University of Pennsylvania were again asked to locate specific items among many others but this time they were instructed to either remain silent during the search or to "keep repeating this word continuously into the microphone until you find the target.

"Saying the object's name during the search resulted in significantly higher accuracy.

"An important question is whether self-directed speech affects the process of locating the target per se, or only aids in identifying it once it is located," they added.

The study has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. (ANI)