Spaced Repetition, where a piece of information is presented multiple times, with exponentially increasing gaps between each repitition, works well to increase how much of the information we engage with actually sticks. Active Recall, where you are asked a question and have to remember the answer, also makes a big difference in how effectively you learn.
I don’t know how these principles can be applied to languages specifically, but building a habit of using these (via Anki) is probably the most effective thing we can do to increase the amount of information our brains engage with. I make a habit of studying Anki for 1⁄2 an hour every day, covering things like mathematics, language, physics, poetry, astronomy, even Chess and Go strategy. Since your question is about how we can increase interpersonal communication, I suspect building a culture of making and sharing high-quality Anki decks can streamline the transfer of information.
While I do posit that our brains naturally feel comfortable engaging with a fixed cadence of information regardless of the richness of our vocabulary, I’m not convinced that our natural pace pushes our brains to our maximum processing capacity- if you listen to a podcast at a faster speed than it was recorded, it does seems that you can take in more information. However, my personal experience shows that if I talk faster than a natural pace, people tend to get confused and frustrated with me, and tell me to slow down. Perhaps the situation is simply that normal people process information optimally at our regular speaking pace, but smart people can process information at a higher speed, so can benefit from a faster speed of communication. Of course, we can reap the benefits of this simply by increasing the speed at which we listen to things, we don’t need richer vocabularies to invoke this effect
Spaced Repetition, where a piece of information is presented multiple times, with exponentially increasing gaps between each repitition, works well to increase how much of the information we engage with actually sticks. Active Recall, where you are asked a question and have to remember the answer, also makes a big difference in how effectively you learn.
I don’t know how these principles can be applied to languages specifically, but building a habit of using these (via Anki) is probably the most effective thing we can do to increase the amount of information our brains engage with. I make a habit of studying Anki for 1⁄2 an hour every day, covering things like mathematics, language, physics, poetry, astronomy, even Chess and Go strategy. Since your question is about how we can increase interpersonal communication, I suspect building a culture of making and sharing high-quality Anki decks can streamline the transfer of information.
While I do posit that our brains naturally feel comfortable engaging with a fixed cadence of information regardless of the richness of our vocabulary, I’m not convinced that our natural pace pushes our brains to our maximum processing capacity- if you listen to a podcast at a faster speed than it was recorded, it does seems that you can take in more information. However, my personal experience shows that if I talk faster than a natural pace, people tend to get confused and frustrated with me, and tell me to slow down. Perhaps the situation is simply that normal people process information optimally at our regular speaking pace, but smart people can process information at a higher speed, so can benefit from a faster speed of communication. Of course, we can reap the benefits of this simply by increasing the speed at which we listen to things, we don’t need richer vocabularies to invoke this effect