Filters and Perception

Another good explanation is to describe a species that is better at communicating than baseline humans, and comparing one's self to homo sapiens sapiens, and comparing other people to this other species. Like Homo Sapiens Novus in "Darwin's Radio" and "Darwin's Children," by Greg Bear. Here we have a species that can have two audio conversations at once by talking out both sides of their mouth, and old Homo Sapiens Sapiens can't understand them when they do it. On top of that, they have melanophores (AKA "dapples") wherein they can have a third conversation while also talking out both sides of their mouth. Oh, and vomeronasal organs wherein they can smell each other's pheremones, for a fourth level of communication. (Fifth, if they still have standard nonverbal communication, which would be excessive I think.)

I'm glad I'm not alone with that particular problem. Often, because I can have quite a bit of difficulty deciphering what is said, I watch movies with the subtitles on. It's not because I can't HEAR what's being said; my hearing is fairly keen and I can even be driven batty by the annoying hum of a TV being on without it playing any sound. It's because I often just can't decipher it, either because of too much background noise or too heavy of accents.

As an interesting sidenote, when speaking to someone with a different language, I can usually repeat back what he or she has said to me with the exact tone and pitch, imitating the accent perfectly. My brain is weird...

Yes. That's exactly what it's like.

Interesting. I've got APD but I never thought of explaining it this way. Sometimes I tell people "My hearing's fine, but my listening is broken."

When I get enough sleep (or when I take an Adderall!) I have much less trouble with these things. Unfortunately sleep and Adderall are sort of mutually exclusive, and I much prefer sleep.

Hey! There's a name for it!

My filters aren't entirely missing, they're just not very good. Or maybe they're just easily overloaded.

Back in the eighties, when I was still in school, I went to a school that was "open plan." This was to get students ready for working in office maze cubicles(I kid you not.)

Basically, the school had Gymnasium sized pods. Each pod was split by office wall dividers, shoulder height. English, Reading, Science, Social Studies and Math, all in the same pod, all at the same time.

For me, it trained my filters to be able to work in loud, chaotic situations. But for many, it proved impossible to learn, and scores dropped. Students without the right kind of filters ended up being bussed to a more traditional school