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How Attention Goes Wrong
- snitko 17y agoInteresting overview of attention disorders, but a misleading title. I though it'd be more about distractions affecting healthy people and how to overcome them, not about disorders.
- thaumaturgy 17y agoI have the "cocktail party problem". When in a noisy or crowded environment, it's nearly impossible for me to figure out what the person in front of me is saying. Even if I concentrate on them, what I get instead is an unintelligible cacophony of sound, with bits of conversation coming in and out of focus all around me. I've tried resorting to lip reading, but I'm not that good at it. Now I usually just get quiet and flee.
- roc 17y agoDitto that. In a fairly calm environment I have pretty good hearing. I regularly pick up faint sounds that other people around me don't. But add any chaos, say in a bar, and I'm pretty close to functionally deaf. I can give a drink order to a bartender and not even hear myself actually speak it, let alone hear them tell me how much the round costs. I run tabs a lot.
- thaumaturgy 17y agoYes, same for me in picking up faint sounds. I spend a bit of time hiking and the like, and can tell from the sound of a rustle of leaves whether there was a squirrel, a raccoon, or a deer. I think what's going on is that neurologically, my attention is always diverted by new sounds. If it's quiet and suddenly something crinkles or shuffles, I hear it extremely clearly. I use this to my advantage -- I have my cell phones set to a very faint single "beep" for their ringtone. It drives other people mad because I'll suddenly get up and go to the phone or dig in my pocket, and they never heard it go off. It's even woke me from a dead sleep. In a natural environment, this would be a pretty useful trait to have, but in artificial environments, all the sounds are "new" and I can't make heads or tails of what's going on.