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Auditory Filtering

Also known as: Selective Listening, Cocktail Party Effect

The neurological ability to selectively attend to specific sounds while suppressing or ignoring background noise. Many autistic individuals and people with sensory processing differences experience difficulties with auditory filtering, making it challenging to follow conversations in noisy environments or to ignore irrelevant sounds. This difficulty is distinct from hearing loss and relates to how the brain processes and prioritises competing auditory information rather than the ability to detect sound.

Category: sensory accessibility · cognitive accessibility

Related: Noise Sensitivity · Sensory Overload · Sound Masking

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