Personally, I tend to struggle with this. I believe the author that people can do it, but I have a hard time distinguishing conversation in noisy environments. I wonder whether there is a...
Personally, I tend to struggle with this. I believe the author that people can do it, but I have a hard time distinguishing conversation in noisy environments. I wonder whether there is a phenomenon similar to aphantasia but for hearing and focus.
It's called Auditory Processing Disorder and I also have it! Took me 40 years of living and starting a career in disability to come to that realization, though.
It's one of my ADHD symptoms, and it's one a lot of ADHD folk suffer from. Filtering and prioritizing signals is difficult for my brain to begin with, especially so when it's a busy environment...
It's one of my ADHD symptoms, and it's one a lot of ADHD folk suffer from. Filtering and prioritizing signals is difficult for my brain to begin with, especially so when it's a busy environment and I'm a bit tired.
Auditory processing disorder was already linked but it can tie in with, or be a symptom of, other disorders.
A friend of mine with ADHD is completely drained after just 1 or 2 hours in busy environments like malls or big box stores. Makes sense that it's linked!
A friend of mine with ADHD is completely drained after just 1 or 2 hours in busy environments like malls or big box stores. Makes sense that it's linked!
Another possible cause, well just a different executive function related cause, from the article:
Another possible cause, well just a different executive function related cause, from the article:
In his 1986 paper, D A Norman, dubbed this embarrassing instance the “what-did-you-say” phenomenon. According to Norman, there exists a temporary memory from which you can fish up pieces of the conversation you missed out on. However, it’s important to distinguish that pieces of the “rejected” message can only be recalled in an extremely short period of time — the “rejected” message is not stored in long-term memory.
ADHD has a lot of comorbidity with AS disorders. This symptom is one of them. I couldn't tell you whether or not it has to do with a disrupted executive function (though I assume it does) but both...
ADHD has a lot of comorbidity with AS disorders. This symptom is one of them. I couldn't tell you whether or not it has to do with a disrupted executive function (though I assume it does) but both Autism and ADHD have issues with filtering signals and stimuli.
It's definitely something I can notice more when I'm tired. If I'm awake and energized I have no problem filtering a conversation out of a noisy room. If I'm tired though, I can longer understand...
It's definitely something I can notice more when I'm tired. If I'm awake and energized I have no problem filtering a conversation out of a noisy room. If I'm tired though, I can longer understand people even if they're standing next to me shouting. It gets overwhelming really quickly.
It's become useful as a signal to myself though, "I should leave now, I'm too tired to enjoy this".
Being tired is a fairly significant factor in my ability to filter. I already have to be extra attentive to what's being said because unlike many, my passive filter just isn't as good to begin...
Being tired is a fairly significant factor in my ability to filter. I already have to be extra attentive to what's being said because unlike many, my passive filter just isn't as good to begin with.
I do find that people are incredibly patient if I'm being honest so I just resort to that more often. Most people don't mind repeating themselves, even if it's the third time. The article even starts with the example that you "secretly" attempt to move forward in the conversation by just saying "yes totally" when you didn't hear something, but my experience tells me that's absolutely the wrong approach.
Funny enough, my ADHD results in way too much filtering. I can drown out just about anything and I lack situational awareness. I got hit with a lot of eye floaters about a year ago and I read...
Funny enough, my ADHD results in way too much filtering. I can drown out just about anything and I lack situational awareness.
I got hit with a lot of eye floaters about a year ago and I read accounts of people with a lot of them not being able to tune them out. But I kept thinking, oh I can definitely tune them out once I'm used to them. Sure enough, I never notice them anymore.
I assume you forget to eat as well then? I forget to eat constantly. I lost 5 pounds this year and I'm already pretty slim. ADHD is a real monkey's paw kind of thing at times.
I assume you forget to eat as well then?
I forget to eat constantly. I lost 5 pounds this year and I'm already pretty slim. ADHD is a real monkey's paw kind of thing at times.
Yes, although I've become better at that with age and changes in life that facilitate a normal cycle. It was a bitch when I was younger. I'd just game away my afternoon, get incredibly hungry but...
Yes, although I've become better at that with age and changes in life that facilitate a normal cycle. It was a bitch when I was younger. I'd just game away my afternoon, get incredibly hungry but always realise it juuust at the time it's inconvenient and I should wait for dinner instead.
I have the opposite problem, my voice is in a register that makes it especially hard to parse out from crowd background noise. Whenever I’m in one of these situations and I start talking I can see...
I have the opposite problem, my voice is in a register that makes it especially hard to parse out from crowd background noise. Whenever I’m in one of these situations and I start talking I can see the others in the group immediately straighten and lean in to catch what I’m saying. I think on some level this has made me hesitant to speak in crowded rooms, or to even to find myself in crowded rooms in the first place.
Hah! I'm not alone! I hear the differences in what part the communication is and what rate is used when listening to a modem but I'm unable to hear simple sentences at a bar....
Hah! I'm not alone!
I hear the differences in what part the communication is and what rate is used when listening to a modem but I'm unable to hear simple sentences at a bar....
Anyone in here who struggles with this: Loops earplugs are a fucking game changer! I have the "engage" variety, and they're the only earplugs I can handle (the "under water" effect most have is...
Anyone in here who struggles with this: Loops earplugs are a fucking game changer! I have the "engage" variety, and they're the only earplugs I can handle (the "under water" effect most have is panic inducing for me, but these don't have that). It's honestly wild how with them in I can be in a noisy, echoy room for hours without needing to escape, and I can actually hear the people I'm with while they're speaking at a normal volume.
I swear I'm not a shill lol, but feel free to AMA because I will praise these things from the rooftops any chance I get.
I'm glad they work for you, but for me all the "loop engage" inserts do is make my own voice sound boomy and everything else nearly inaudible. After giving up on those I got a pair of "calmer pro"...
I'm glad they work for you, but for me all the "loop engage" inserts do is make my own voice sound boomy and everything else nearly inaudible. After giving up on those I got a pair of "calmer pro" inserts and found those help me a great deal. The acid test for me is a very echoey rehearsal space our orchestra uses. For a long time I had been missing entrances because it seemed like I was the only one who couldn't understand the conductor's instructions.
Maybe some of us really are dealing with different causes for similar symptoms, and one or the other device happens to target it better? I wonder.
This is purely anecdotal. When I hear someone start speaking a language that I know and the language is not something I expect to hear where I happen to be when I hear it, it’s super noticeable in...
Say, if one of the people in the room switched languages and began conversing with their group in German — would you notice?
If you answered ‘yes’, I’m remiss to say that the answer isn’t as simple as that. In matters concerned with high levels of concentration, chances are you wouldn’t notice a change in language. As a matter of fact, the only thing you might conclusively notice is that the noise in the room was human in nature.
This is purely anecdotal. When I hear someone start speaking a language that I know and the language is not something I expect to hear where I happen to be when I hear it, it’s super noticeable in the kinds of noisy environments described in the article.
A representative example would be:
Person A is sitting in a noisy coffee shop where the majority language is English and Faroese is exceptionally rare to hear. Person A knows English and Faroese.
Person B enters and orders coffee in English. Person B sits down and begins speaking to Person C in Faroese.
Person A immediately hears that someone is speaking Faroese.
This seems to be common, at least with the folks I know who live in my area and speak the same language, both for individuals with ADHD and without.
I wonder if there have been studies done on this and if others on Tildes have similar experiences. Perhaps because it’s a known stimulus but not an expected one in that time and place, the brain flags it for additional scrutiny?
I recall something similar in studies on in-group preference in infants. One of the takeaways (iirc, from old discussion) was that while babies "like" people that physically look like their care...
I recall something similar in studies on in-group preference in infants. One of the takeaways (iirc, from old discussion) was that while babies "like" people that physically look like their care takers more they have an even stronger preference for people speaking the same language. Or maybe they just mistrust the French
In a series of studies, 10-month-old infants in the U.S. and France were shown movies of a native French speaker and a native English speaker who spoke to the infant in alternation. Infants then were shown events in which the two speakers appeared together without speaking, held up two identical toys and, silently and in synchrony, offered the toys to the infant. Just at the moment at which the toys disappeared from view, two real toys appeared in front of the infant, giving the illusion that the toys came from the screen. Infants in the U.S. reached for the toy offered by an English speaker rather than a French speaker, and infants in France reached for the toy offered by the French speaker, even though the toys were identical and were never paired on screen with the language ...
In one study, 2.5-year-old children were shown the same displays of French and English speakers. The two speakers then appeared together silently, and children were given an opportunity to “give a present” to one of them. Children in both the U.S. and France reliably chose the native speaker as the recipient of their gift (Kinzler, Dupoux, & Spelke, under review). In another study, 5-year-old children were shown still photographs of children and then listened to samples of their speech, which varied either in language or in accent, and were asked to choose one child as a friend. Children’s choices were reliably affected by the accent with which the other children spoke. Moreover, children’s friendship choices dissociated from their judgments of comprehensibility: although children understood a child who spoke their native language with a foreign accent, they nonetheless preferred to associate with a native-accented child
Another related concept might be the uncanney valley curve, or our sensitivity to natural acceleration, which we use to categorize the world into agentic and non-agentic things. We're very good at telling if something is falling/moving/etc. in a way that would require it to be alive. And if something is trying to act like it's a floating log (or a human) and we detect that, odds are it is trying to trick you and not for a good reason.
If someone speaks in an unexpected language or mispronounces a shibboleth they may be out-group and evolution has taught us that might be dangerous.
What we perceive is a consensus of a lot of different parts of the brain, and those parts can each be primed in different ways to make them biased towards a particular result. Lots of fun examples of audio priming out there, like the McGurk effect or garbled audio that becomes completely understandable once you're told what it is. I would guess many factors (e.g., recency of speaker to group, perceived safety, etc.) play a role in the threshold of alien argot you have to hear to catch your attention.
Personally, I tend to struggle with this. I believe the author that people can do it, but I have a hard time distinguishing conversation in noisy environments. I wonder whether there is a phenomenon similar to aphantasia but for hearing and focus.
It's called Auditory Processing Disorder and I also have it!
Took me 40 years of living and starting a career in disability to come to that realization, though.
Thank you. Guess I'll stick to smaller venues and 1 on 1 meetings to work around it.
It's one of my ADHD symptoms, and it's one a lot of ADHD folk suffer from. Filtering and prioritizing signals is difficult for my brain to begin with, especially so when it's a busy environment and I'm a bit tired.
Auditory processing disorder was already linked but it can tie in with, or be a symptom of, other disorders.
A friend of mine with ADHD is completely drained after just 1 or 2 hours in busy environments like malls or big box stores. Makes sense that it's linked!
Another possible cause, well just a different executive function related cause, from the article:
I have it too, but while I don’t have ADHD, I’m probably somewhere on the ASD spectrum. So yeah it seems to coexist with neurodivergence
ADHD has a lot of comorbidity with AS disorders. This symptom is one of them. I couldn't tell you whether or not it has to do with a disrupted executive function (though I assume it does) but both Autism and ADHD have issues with filtering signals and stimuli.
It's definitely something I can notice more when I'm tired. If I'm awake and energized I have no problem filtering a conversation out of a noisy room. If I'm tired though, I can longer understand people even if they're standing next to me shouting. It gets overwhelming really quickly.
It's become useful as a signal to myself though, "I should leave now, I'm too tired to enjoy this".
Being tired is a fairly significant factor in my ability to filter. I already have to be extra attentive to what's being said because unlike many, my passive filter just isn't as good to begin with.
I do find that people are incredibly patient if I'm being honest so I just resort to that more often. Most people don't mind repeating themselves, even if it's the third time. The article even starts with the example that you "secretly" attempt to move forward in the conversation by just saying "yes totally" when you didn't hear something, but my experience tells me that's absolutely the wrong approach.
Funny enough, my ADHD results in way too much filtering. I can drown out just about anything and I lack situational awareness.
I got hit with a lot of eye floaters about a year ago and I read accounts of people with a lot of them not being able to tune them out. But I kept thinking, oh I can definitely tune them out once I'm used to them. Sure enough, I never notice them anymore.
It's interesting because that can happen when I hyperfocus on something to the point I can ignore my bladder screaming for relief.
I assume you forget to eat as well then?
I forget to eat constantly. I lost 5 pounds this year and I'm already pretty slim. ADHD is a real monkey's paw kind of thing at times.
Yes, although I've become better at that with age and changes in life that facilitate a normal cycle. It was a bitch when I was younger. I'd just game away my afternoon, get incredibly hungry but always realise it juuust at the time it's inconvenient and I should wait for dinner instead.
I have the opposite problem, my voice is in a register that makes it especially hard to parse out from crowd background noise. Whenever I’m in one of these situations and I start talking I can see the others in the group immediately straighten and lean in to catch what I’m saying. I think on some level this has made me hesitant to speak in crowded rooms, or to even to find myself in crowded rooms in the first place.
Hah! I'm not alone!
I hear the differences in what part the communication is and what rate is used when listening to a modem but I'm unable to hear simple sentences at a bar....
Anyone in here who struggles with this: Loops earplugs are a fucking game changer! I have the "engage" variety, and they're the only earplugs I can handle (the "under water" effect most have is panic inducing for me, but these don't have that). It's honestly wild how with them in I can be in a noisy, echoy room for hours without needing to escape, and I can actually hear the people I'm with while they're speaking at a normal volume.
I swear I'm not a shill lol, but feel free to AMA because I will praise these things from the rooftops any chance I get.
I'm glad they work for you, but for me all the "loop engage" inserts do is make my own voice sound boomy and everything else nearly inaudible. After giving up on those I got a pair of "calmer pro" inserts and found those help me a great deal. The acid test for me is a very echoey rehearsal space our orchestra uses. For a long time I had been missing entrances because it seemed like I was the only one who couldn't understand the conductor's instructions.
Maybe some of us really are dealing with different causes for similar symptoms, and one or the other device happens to target it better? I wonder.
This is purely anecdotal. When I hear someone start speaking a language that I know and the language is not something I expect to hear where I happen to be when I hear it, it’s super noticeable in the kinds of noisy environments described in the article.
A representative example would be:
This seems to be common, at least with the folks I know who live in my area and speak the same language, both for individuals with ADHD and without.
I wonder if there have been studies done on this and if others on Tildes have similar experiences. Perhaps because it’s a known stimulus but not an expected one in that time and place, the brain flags it for additional scrutiny?
I recall something similar in studies on in-group preference in infants. One of the takeaways (iirc, from old discussion) was that while babies "like" people that physically look like their care takers more they have an even stronger preference for people speaking the same language. Or maybe they just mistrust the French
Another related concept might be the uncanney valley curve, or our sensitivity to natural acceleration, which we use to categorize the world into agentic and non-agentic things. We're very good at telling if something is falling/moving/etc. in a way that would require it to be alive. And if something is trying to act like it's a floating log (or a human) and we detect that, odds are it is trying to trick you and not for a good reason.
If someone speaks in an unexpected language or mispronounces a shibboleth they may be out-group and evolution has taught us that might be dangerous.
What we perceive is a consensus of a lot of different parts of the brain, and those parts can each be primed in different ways to make them biased towards a particular result. Lots of fun examples of audio priming out there, like the McGurk effect or garbled audio that becomes completely understandable once you're told what it is. I would guess many factors (e.g., recency of speaker to group, perceived safety, etc.) play a role in the threshold of alien argot you have to hear to catch your attention.