How are we able to focus on a particular person’s words and almost “drown out” other people around us?
In: Biology
The human brain is extremely good at seeking patterns. Language is a pattern, so we’re naturally good at distinguishing it from background noise. We’re so good at it, in fact, that we can sometimes here language where there isn’t any and our senses are fooled.
Also, when it comes to distinguishing between people, it’s important that we focus on that person. If two people speak at the same time and you’re not focusing, you can’t follow either story, but if you focus on one (doesn’t matter which one) you can completely drown out the other. This is because we tell our brain to focus on a specific pattern (one person’s voice), which is a lot easier to distinguish than two at the same time (less signal overlap).
To put it simply: Language is a pattern which we can detect and doing so with other people talking in the background is easy when we train ourselves to focus on just one of those patterns.
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