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I am not so sure about this I suspect it is perhaps more of a learned skill. Professional DJs come to mind. To match two desperate musical tracks with differi

I am not so sure about this I suspect it is perhaps more of a learned skill. Professional DJs come to mind. To match two desperate musical tracks with differing tempo and align correctly requires following two musical tracks simultaneously. Initially it is very much as you say but over time you learn to hear them both separately and together without strain. My experience with twitch is another anecdotal counterpoint. After a lot of practice I now regularly listen to multiple audio streams at the same time and no longer hand any problem following up to three streams simultaneously these days, and it was impossible for me at first. Another issue is at what point does very fast attention switching become effectively multiprocessing? If we don't notice the context switching happening is still "happening"?

drumdance 11y ago
This rings true to me. As a trained musician, I know that I hear music differently from most untrained people. I notice the bass line, or the way the melody inverts, or anticipate the end of a phrase. Several years ago Kathy Sierra wrote a great post about how app developers should try to educate users from the first time they use the product and "raise the resolution" on how they think about the problem the app is designed to solve. http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/12/the_hires_user_.html http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/1...
YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago
>> Another issue is at what point does very fast attention switching become effectively multiprocessing? If we don't notice the context switching happening is still "happening"? Well, OK, that's one big question. However, I can process music and language at the same time. I think I can process multiple pieces of music at the same time, for example I can follow a complex piece of classical music or jazz with multiple instruments playing at various signatures and so on (full disclosure: I'm a drummer). I can't quite do that with speech though. So maybe music and language are just different things and they're processed in different ways?

drumdance 11y ago

This rings true to me. As a trained musician, I know that I hear music differently from most untrained people. I notice the bass line, or the way the melody inverts, or anticipate the end of a phrase. Several years ago Kathy Sierra wrote a great post about how app developers should try to educate users from the first time they use the product and "raise the resolution" on how they think about the problem the app is designed to solve. http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/12/the_hires_user_.html http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/1...

YeGoblynQueenne 11y ago

>> Another issue is at what point does very fast attention switching become effectively multiprocessing? If we don't notice the context switching happening is still "happening"? Well, OK, that's one big question. However, I can process music and language at the same time. I think I can process multiple pieces of music at the same time, for example I can follow a complex piece of classical music or jazz with multiple instruments playing at various signatures and so on (full disclosure: I'm a drummer). I can't quite do that with speech though. So maybe music and language are just different things and they're processed in different ways?