Point and Call and the Point of it all

YTG — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 21:19:40 +0000

There was a time my keys went missing and I frantically rummaged the place in what I thought was every nook and cranny to find them. I was already running late for one thing or another and I couldn’t appreciate adding more time to the wait with these missing keys. Sure, some people may now have technologically advanced solutions to this frenzy by clipping a tag to the keys that can be geo-tracked in real time (I’ve even seen parents attach tags to necklaces for their small kids to wear), but there may be an even simpler, more versatile solution (regarding the keys, not the small children).

What is Pointing and Calling?
A solution I’ve read about earlier and have seen in some travel documentaries too is “Pointing and Calling.” Also known as shisa kanko (指差喚呼) in Japanese, Pointing and Calling is a method many industry workers use to improve their efficiency and accuracy of operations.

_{A video by Atlas Obscura on the Pointing and Calling method (Atlas Obscura, 2020)}

指差喚呼 shisa kanko
Literal translation: finger point and call out
指 (shi) finger
差 (sa) difference/variation
喚(kan)call
呼(ko) call/summon
Note: The individual characters have particular meanings that can vary in meaning and nuance when combined with other characters!

How to do the Point and Call
To do the Pointing and Calling method, workers point to the object they’re reviewing or checking, check it, and say it out loud to confirm the check. For example, if I were to roughly apply this method to placing my keys in a specific spot, I would:
1) Point to the keys on the table
2) Check that they are on the table
3) Say out loud that they are on the table; i.e., I would say “The keys are on this table.”

The Japan Industrial Safety & Health Association (JISHA) has a clear diagram of the process on their website, along with their safety philosophy (JISHA, n.d.). According to an interview between K. Tabata of JISHA and A. Gordenker of The Japan Times, research conducted in 1994 by the Railway Technical Research Institute shows that the implementation of Pointing and Calling reduced errors by about 85% ((Gordenker, 2008)! Its effectiveness and simplicity make it a sensible component of JISHA’s zero-accident total participation campaign (JISHA, n.d.).

_{Pointing and Calling is not exclusive to Japanese organizations; other companies around the world use it to boost safety and accuracy, including Metrolinx in Toronto/Ontario (Metrolinx News, 2022)}

Applications elsewhere
The Pointing and Calling method can apply to areas beyond railway operations, including in healthcare settings. The method is low-cost and accessible, with its effectiveness supported by evidence and could be used to improve awareness and prevent errors among paramedics (Violato & Cheung, 2025). It’s essentially a low-risk cognitive checklist, which can easily be employed by healthcare professionals (Violato et al., 2022). Pointing and Calling, along with other related methods that can reduce errors (like TWED), could counter cognitive biases while improving decision making and precision (Kim et al., 2024; Chew et al., 2019). Once again, their checklist quality is what disrupts automatic, quick thinking, forcing the user to check their own thinking; this “check of thinking” is a process known as metacognition (Chew et al., 2019).

TWED is a mnemonic that stands for:
T = Threat (identify the threat)
W = What else? (what are other reasons for threat exist?)
E = Evidence (is there enough evidence to support or reject the decision?)
D = Dispositional factors (what other factors could influence this decision, e.g., emotional or environmental factors at play?)
(Chew et al., 2016)

Why would this work?
In addition to its metacognitive properties, which JISHA alludes to in their statement of “raising the consciousness level” (JISHA, n.d.), the effectiveness of Pointing and Calling may also be due to the activation of multiple sensory inputs.

Pointing, for example, involves the use of gestures and motor movements, and the use of meaningful gestures may reduce demands on working memory to help us remember more information (Cook et al., 2012). Learning words in a foreign language may also be enhanced with complementary gestures, activating areas of the brain’s motor cortex to support language learning (Mathias et al., 2021). This could be seen as an extension of the enactment effect, which has been studied over the past few decades to show that acting out items (e.g., words or phrases) can lead to better memory for them (Arar et al., 1993).

What is Working Memory?

Aging in Multilingual

YTG — Wed, 24 Dec 2025 03:45:00 +0000

Multilingualism mystifies me with its modest magic. Being able to share a thought with another through language is already useful, and then to amplify this prowess along a different dimension is nothing short of beautiful. Many researchers have prodded the possibility of multilingual benefits and evidence continues to accrue in favour of these advantages.

One such area is in brain aging, where bilingualism or multilingualism has shown to confer some protection on our cognition. Cognition is what we call our process of learning, experiencing, and thinking (Bayne et al., 2019) and is an area language researchers explore to gauge the effects of languages on our thoughts, thinking, and memories. As with many things, cognition is subject to the less pleasant aspects of aging.

Yet, cognitive reserve, a feature of cognition, is one that may be bolstered by one’s use of languages. Cognitive reserve can be described as the buffer between an intangible thinking and a physical brain that can sustain some cognitive function, despite a crumbling of physical mass. Knowing more than one language, as is in the case of bilingualism, can support cognitive reserve into old age and improve performance compared to those who speak one language (Bialystok, 2021). Bilingualism in earlier life stages may even create a cognitive protective effect that endures into old age (Ballarini et al., 2023). This is concluded from results on tasks or activities and/or through brain structure itself.

How do we measure cognition?

Hello world!

languagesciencey — Sun, 21 Dec 2025 16:37:57 +0000

The title is the default title for a first post, but it really is quite adorable, isn’t it? I’ve decided to keep it since it puts a smile on my face knowing that I can greet an entire world with two tiny bits of text.

And that is the power of language.

language – languagesciencey

Point and Call and the Point of it all

Aging in Multilingual

Hello world!