Is there a word for this?

January 14, 2016 2:56 PM

Is there a word for when you hear someone say something in the background or when you're not paying attention and you don't process it immediately, but recognize the word a few seconds later from the pattern of pronunciation? I suppose sort of like hearing someone say your name without actually hearing them say your name.

Or is it just me who does this?

posted by jourman2 to Science & Nature (8 answers total)

I do this continually and just noticed myself doing it a lot on a couple hard-to-hear conference calls I was transcribing earlier. When you transcribe in real time, you can be consciously aware of your brain decoding garbled words in your short-term memory buffer as you acquire more context. I'm not sure whether that's the right term for it, though.
posted by limeonaire at 3:03 PM on January 14, 2016

I don't know if there is a word for that exact phenomenon, but, no, it is not just you. What you describe is sort of common for people with Central Auditory Processing Disorders (CAPD).

Auditory processing disorder (APD), also known as central auditory processing disorder (CAPD), is an umbrella term for a variety of disorders that affect the way the brain processes auditory information.[1] Individuals with APD usually have normal structure and function of the outer, middle and inner ear (peripheral hearing). However, they cannot process the information they hear in the same way as others do, which leads to difficulties in recognizing and interpreting sounds, especially the sounds composing speech. It is thought that these difficulties arise from dysfunction in the central nervous system.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auditory_processing_disorder

So, you physically hear it, but your brain doesn't process it quite as fast for some reason. It can be worse when you are tired or there is a lot of ambient noise. People with this condition often supplement their understanding of spoken conversation with lip reading, often without realizing it.
posted by Michele in California at 3:05 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

This happens to me very often. I hear the person, but I can't understand what they're saying immediately. This leads to a lot of mildly awkward moments of me asking "wait, what did you say?" and then immediately responding to what they said without them even getting a chance to repeat it. I've also experienced others doing the same to me.
posted by a strong female character at 3:44 PM on January 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

I've heard the name one called the Cocktail Party Effect.
posted by solotoro at 4:08 PM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've heard Cocktail Party Syndrome.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:34 PM on January 14, 2016

In psychology, the cocktail party effect was described to me as when your name jumps out at you from the buzz of conversation (because your brain filters out by attention and your name has so much more meaning for you that it seems to get a sort of special tag).

When you hear a sentence and then rethink it and understand it (or understand it differently) this is often called re-parsing. It seems to happen because speech comprehension is something that happens in real time, and sometimes you are building up a model (or an understanding of what you are hearing - it's not like a formal model) of the sounds or syntax you are hearing, then you hear a bit more and realise that model can't be true, so then your brain has to construct a new model that fits with the new information, and you are left puzzled for a second.

Experimentally, you can study this effect by using sentences that are syntactically ambiguous - the famous example is "the horse raced past the barn fell", which could be understood either as "the horse raced past. The barn fell" or "the horse that was raced past the barn fell". If you are using reading, you can study eye movements to get an idea of when re-parsing.

In fact, to answer your question fully, you would need to get into a lot of the basics of psycholinguistics - great question!
posted by kadia_a at 11:22 PM on January 14, 2016 [5 favorites]

Delayed auditory processing, or auditory re-processing. Part of normal brain functioning :)
posted by lokta at 3:10 AM on January 15, 2016 [2 favorites]

Buffering. Quite common. Characterized by someone saying, "What?" and then realizing that they don't need anyone to answer the question because they can remember what they just heard.
posted by Capri at 4:27 PM on January 16, 2016 [1 favorite]