A man concentrates on his smartphone while a female companion looks on. (Photo : YouTube/Computing Forever)
Science just offered an explanation to why individuals seem to tune out or do not pay attention to what other people say to them when preoccupied with visual tasks, a University College London study uncovered.
The phenomenon is called visual load-induced or inattentional deafness. Thirteen volunteers were subjected to brain scans, and it confirmed that when they were preoccupied with demanding visual tasks, it reduced their response to sound.
This explains why individuals tinkering with their smartphones, browsing sites, watching television, or playing computer games seem deaf to their immediate surroundings.
Professor Nilli Lavie of the UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience reported in the UCL website that multiple experiments were done, establishing that reduced auditory detection sensitivity is an offshoot of high visual perceptual load.
Study co-author Dr. Maria Chait underscored that based on the brain scan results, individuals were not really playing deaf and ignoring sounds, but were actually not hearing them to begin with, a UCL press release reported.
The study, that was published in the Journal of Neuroscience, sheds light on male-female communication patterns. Some people will better understand why their spouses or their kids may seem to be tuning them out, thereby lessening exasperation.
Wives who generally regard conversation as a form of sharing and opportunity to bond with their partners will not have hurt feelings once they learn about inattentional deafness.
Inattentional deafness may have more serious repercussions, though. Surgeons may be oblivious to a beeping medical device. Motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians may not hear moderate to soft sounds in the vicinity if they are engrossed with their smartphones or other gadgets.
