As a pilot and a radio officer, I have always been able to process and service 2 audio streams simultaneously. So not surprised with this finding.
Then it is known that if you play to someone with small delay what he says he will be lost on both - so he can't think about and listen to what he is saying if it's not one stream.
This makes me wonder how much of paying attention is really prioritization rather than filtering everything else out. We probably process far more than we're consciously aware of.
I def process more than I want.
Its def a spectrum.
In the easiest look at people like me who complain very quick if something is wrong like to warm to cold to sweaty etc. and others not even ackknowliding it at all
Absolutely. Take a look at "unconscious perception".
The DJ is explained.
This is maybe only tangentially relevant to the linked study, but I've noticed I can read aloud from a book on autopilot while thinking about other things or even thinking back on past conversations. I could not do this a few years ago, but now it happens on its own. I wonder how that relates to attention and speech streams
Not reading out loud, but I've caught myself a few times on reading and not processing that, because I was thinking about something else. Like I still did the reading, but straight to /dev/null of my brain
I experienced this too, when I started reading out loud more. At first, it was just that my eyes would scan ahead a bit from what I was saying, to help me get the right emphasis by knowing where the sentence was going. It felt like I had "handed off" saying the words out loud to a "subroutine", so my attention could be on what I was reading. Then that "readahead" extended to a whole sentence. And at that point it was like I was so far ahead of what I was saying that I had time to think about it a bit. And then at some point it was like the "reading the words" part got handed off to a "subroutine" too, so my attention could mostly stay on whatever I was thinking
Sometimes I read a book out loud and think about something completely different.
I wonder if reading aloud might be like walking. I can be walking and speaking to a person at the same time.
This is something that has been studied and is apparently more common when reading out loud. I have this as well. I can read to my kids and at the same time plan the upcoming day. Pretty neat!
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parents tend to yell at the same time and it needs simultaneous processing
Also explains why we like music with two simultaneous distinct sections (bass + the rest). One without the other doesn't feel as complete
This is a completely different phenomenon. Your ear/brain are tuned to rhythmic beats in the lower frequencies (footsteps). We're better at pattern recognition with the lower frequencies.
Also, our brains will encode the differences in registers to evoke emotion differently, which is often used by horror films to make a scene scarier[0]. Evolutionarily this is probably to detect screams or babies crying, a rustling bush, etc.
Speech encoding, at least per this article, has little to do with that. We don't have music encoding so much as we have pattern recognition, instinctual emotional respond to sound, etc.
Another great video about how music is perceived in animals is [1], just while we're on the topic.
[0] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-the-hidden-sounds-...
Perhaps a dumb question but are they center panned (or mono, i.e. talking over each other) or is it split left ear/right ear when they come through the headset?
They are mono, but I was trying to say that with practice, you can process 2 independent audio streams simultaneously irrespective of whether they are mono or stereo. For example, I am able to keep track of 2 people talking at the same time. I obviously can't respond to both but can maintain independent contexts.
I wonder if piano players find that easier too, compared to lay people.
Airplane radios are generally broadcasting and receiving mono. There are modern headsets that can also play stereo, but only for onboard music or intercom purposes, if the plane supports it. But in planes with 2 radios you can usually configure their I/O individually. So you can listen (and also talk, although that makes sense less often) on two frequencies at the same time.