I'll preface comments above and I just find it interesting. Cognition and absorbing and retaining information fascinates me. I should mention that I literally cannot listen to audio books. I'm essentially incapable of it. I'm an avid reader of text in books or online. My brain absorbs information well VISUALLY. Give me an audio book and my mind instantly wanders, looks at stuff, thinks about other stuff. if I put an audiobook on and went for a walk I would literally have not even 20% focus on whats playing. Yet give me any print and I'm zoned right in.
This study makes it seem like I'm not so alone;
Your Brain On Audio Books: Distracted, Forgetful, And Bored
People just focus very little, generally to auditory information. Some people report just falling asleep when read to (childhood vestige?)
Theres even a lot of studies that say people interpret literature, and narratively remember it or make it up differently if they are listening vs reading. Even that the speaker in audiobooks so vastly changes the experience of the book just by their voice. Even changes the meaning even though the words are the same..
The reason I'm interested in this is a cognitive psych course I took once on how the brain loads, memory chunks, and retains or expels information. So that memory retention and learning modalities and those kinds of things just fascinate me. To anybody interested, and I apologize in an instance for the distraction if it is that,
how do you listen to radio and concentrate on what its saying?
I get lost virtually within minutes or seconds. When I listen to an Oilers podcast I have to take notes (written/visual modality) to virtually retain anything. My brain is not hardwired to audio. When I used to be a student I had to literally write every work a prof says and then read it later because I absorb maybe 30% of stated information in am auditory lecture format. But I realize everybody is probably different. from the earliest age I could read literally anything and with pretty good retention. So I am strong in that area. Possibly even that I was such a strong reader that other forms of information processing modalities didn't work as well for me. I also have ADHD. Reading helps me to focus and stay on task. Audio is all about the wandering, I have never managed to concentrate adequately with audio only.
Heres an interesting thing. Go to any lecture. Presentation. people look at the presenter, much of the time. Basically stare at them. Even though its the words, not the vision you are supposed to be paying attention to. But I think a lot of people learn that they have to focus visually on the speaker in order to focus on the speaker. Or at least that's what 9/10 students do. I'm forever fascinated with how the human brain works, or doesn't work.
I realize in advance this is way out there but just wanted to explain further how auditory radio information just doesn't work for me. To the point where I can't even fathom the activity.
