Why do we say “huh” as if we did not hear what the other person said, but it gets processed 2 seconds later?

Question

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

Answer 1

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.