Why do we say “huh” as if we did not hear what the other person said, but it gets processed 2 seconds later?
In: Biology
One cause can be that you heard the sound of what they said but didn’t process those sounds as language.
At the time of saying “huh? ” you haven’t understood what they’ve said but the sound of what they said is still in short term memory so you have another chance to process the sounds as language.
Then you do know what they said.
I think it may also have to do with the fact that we end up saying “huh” because we hear something that we were not expecting. What I’m trying to say is that you expect the person to say a particular phrase or word… but then when they don’t it takes a while for your brain to “replay” what the person said in your head.
I have nothing to add but this happens to me all the time and people get mad because they think I’m lying when I say I didn’t hear them.
Sometimes your brain will miss/garble a word in the beginning of the statement but can then correctly backfill it with the context.
What’s your favorite stalbwers movie? I still say Empire Strikes Back is the best.
To add to the explanation of missed/jarbled words: sometimes you DO hear and understand everything but need another few seconds to process a response. This can happen consciously or unconsciously.
This is actually a real phenomenon. Short answer is that the auditory processing parts of our brain run faster than the language processing parts. We can make sense of a less-than-perfectly-clear speech pattern using context and memory, but it takes several fractions of a second longer than the sensory input of sound takes to get registered.
Broad answer: Incoming data trickles through your brain on lots of different paths, at different speeds.
My weirdest example: when I flinch at a loud sound, the memory of the flinch usually precedes the memory of the sound.
When someone says huh to your comment, their mind has been elsewhere, they say huh, you are hearing them shift gears into listening to you while leaving the previous thought process.
I’ve noticed this happens all the time to people. You say something, they ask huh? Then when you repeat it, halfway thru they answer you.
Its like so you clearly heard it the first time then right?
To give you more time to formulate the next thing to say.
Same reason people say ‘errrrm’ a lot while speaking. It opens up thinking time, while still letting the other person know what you’re not done speaking, and preventing them from using the silence to talk before you’ve finished your point.
The ‘huh?’ is almost opposite to that, by making the other person fill the void so you don’t need to.
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