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Comment by treflop | Hacker News Reader

There’s something called Auditory Processing Disorder where you are not able to able to differentiate sound and it supposedly can develop later in life.

I’ve had it since I was a kid because I always passed the hearing tests but every other kid had no trouble listening to music and understanding the words and so on so I put two and two together.

Anyway, I have never been able to understand anyone in any loud public space which absolutely blows when you’re not a home body.

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

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Thank you for the name of this disorder and link! I've also had this my whole life, and I knew it was a thing that wasn't terribly rare (based on reading comments from others in the past, here on HN and elsewhere), but I think this is the first time I've seen a name for this condition.

The Wikipedia page seems to really describe my condition, except for the potential overlap with ADHD. For example, the "difficulty following oral instructions". I can read something and retain it forever, but if someone speaks to me, it will often go in one ear and out the other.

I sometimes wonder if this could be a result of being a very introverted child who started reading at around 3 or 4 years old. (Because reading is so awesome, why bother listening to people -- and improving your auditory neurology -- after that?)

I think I've probably just adapted to the condition. It doesn't seem like any sort of problem or disability. But I suspect others around me find it much more annoying than I do. ;)

One thing I feel in my personal experience --

while I am doing something -- inability to switch attention to someone speaking to me if they do not first ask for my attention (excuse me / hello / myname / cough / knock) before diving into speaking in sentences.

very often by the time i start paying attention to them speaking -- they are 4-5 words into their sentence and I have missed the context of what they are talking about and i have to ask them to stop and repeat from start

This has happened with me in multiple settings (work and personal life)

Not sure if this is a common thing along with APD - which i recognize some symptoms of in myself

This describes well something I've learned about myself. I just figured it was excessive focus, to the point of drowning out the outside world.

Is the excessive focus the same as hyperfocus?

Probably, yeah.

You may not have hearing loss, but you might actually benefit from modern hearing aids which can attenuate background noise better than consumer noise cancelling headphones. My partner has APD and hearing aids were a life-changer for them.

Consumer stuff is also getting better really quickly though

My reply here may be useful to you - where I mention Berard AIT (Auditory Integration Training) and my own experience with hearing difficulties, which I was able to solve with AIT at age 23 (now 41): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40516028

Thanks for this. I also have this, but I never bothered to look up if this is a recognized thing (of course it is) and what it's called since it seemed unlikely that anything could be done about it.

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