The average 20-year-old knows between 27,000 and 52,000 different words. Spoken out loud, most of these words last less than a second. With every word, the brain has a quick decision to make: which of those thousands of options matches the signal? And about 98% of the time, the brain chooses the correct word. How is this possible? Gareth Gaskell digs into the complexities of speech comprehension.

20岁的年轻人平均认识27000到52000个不同的单词。大声说出来，这些单词中的大部分持续时间不到一秒。对于每一个单词，大脑都要迅速做出决定：在这数千个选项中，哪一个与信号相匹配？而大约98%的时间，大脑都会选择正确的单词。这怎么可能呢？加雷斯-盖斯克尔深入研究了语音理解的复杂性。