Comment by HPsquared
5 days ago
I have the opposite problem: any words I hear spoken in the vicinity directly interrupt my brain's language processor (which is single-threaded) and breaks any chain of thought or writing attempt.
5 days ago
I have the opposite problem: any words I hear spoken in the vicinity directly interrupt my brain's language processor (which is single-threaded) and breaks any chain of thought or writing attempt.
I really love living in a country which languages I don't understand. I feel my brain is cosily protected when everyone around sounds like they are speaking in simlish.
I've lived in places like that and had similar thoughts. I remember riding a subway and hearing conversations and squabbles all around me and understanding none of it. I know if I could understand the language, my brain would have been busy trying to make sense of it all and keep up, but instead, it just wasn't, and I knew in the moment that I was getting a break.
I can watch youtube cookery or world food with no issue, but as soon as someone "real" talks I have a buffer of about 10s before my thoughts come crashing down around me - I think it's the expectation of response, and I can only talk or listen, my verbal output is single threaded and probably running on some old crappy processor with fdiv errors.
Same... can't read anything if I can hear someone talking, even if I don't want to listen to them. Music and noise-cancelling headphones make it all better. I can't understand anything if more than one person is talking at the same volume. Maybe that's just normal and I'm bad at lip reading, though.
As far as anecdata, I've worn noise-cancelling headphones at least 40 hours a week for the past 18 years. Granted, my formative years pre-date noise cancellation, but I haven't noticed any impact to my hearing or audio processing. Pretty sure I'd be listening to music much louder without noise cancellation.
Aligning visual content with the words being spoken can be helpful in cases like this.
I agree that I have taken care of my hearing despite doing what I want for the most part.
Now with small aliens roaming the homestead, being able to tune it out to access the well developed trained focus mode is useful.
At the same time, I'm not sure if anyone's using apps like Brain.fm or Endel to help keep some noise going to the brain, just not silence.
I have used brain.fm for a lot of years when I'd remember to (meaning I needed it), and recently started experimenting with Endel, which has been more useful than I anticipated.
> I can't understand anything if more than one person is talking at the same volume. Maybe that's just normal and I'm bad at lip reading, though.
I want to say it's normal, but it's also known as sensory or auditory processing disorder and it's not uncommon in neurodiverse people. Learning some lip reading or just observing someone's mouth movements helps me in those situations, but it's far from ideal.
I have this problem! Not 100% of the time though. Some thinking tasks are non auditory, and don't get interrupted. But yeah, is there a term for this?
I read books on auditory processing disorder about 8 to 10 years before I was diagnosed autistic.
Also the same here. And there’s nothing I can do. I can almost sweat with the effort of not heeding a background voice but I still will. Then my attention bounces back and forth.
> I have the opposite problem: any words I hear spoken in the vicinity directly interrupt my brain's language processor (which is single-threaded) and breaks any chain of thought or writing attempt.
And heaven forbid I try to speak a word or two while typing. Very often I type what I meant to say, and vice versa.
When I used to play the piano, making music would occupy the language processor. If you asked me a question while I was playing, I would have to stop in order to reply; I couldn't form any words otherwise.
I wonder if Franz Liszt could've replied in a number of languages without breaking stride...
knock knock... interrupting cow...