I wanted to write a short piece on how humans process auditory data structures in memory.
It is popular to discuss how some people think in terms of pictures, some in terms of sounds. Others say they think in terms of neither pictures nor sounds, nor feelings, but concepts. This is a juvenile fallacy as humans can only consciously process concepts by their sensory semantic handles ... a.k.a. by naming those concepts. And names as verbal entitles are generally semanticised as things seen, heard, or felt.
I myself, mostly think in terms of sounds - I don't visualise words as much as I hear them. When I think verbally, I am thinking in terms of words aurally present in my conscious memory. If it was necessary to analyse the voice, it would be lacking in higher frequencies, and presenting only the necessary percussive and tonally modulated characteristics which make sounds clearly recognisable as words.
In my daily performance of social analysis, I listen to the words people speak, and then I replay them as a simulated voice in my head. I may change the voice and keep the words, or keep the voice and change the words, all in an effort to generate information by mutating this or that aspect of the heard phenomena, then running it all through my subconscious again just to see what effect pops back into my consciousness.
Socially, I often perform the role of moderator, or consolidator of ideas, for groups of people. What this involves is simply ... the simulation of all their speeches, as above, simultaneously and in chorus ... then fed to the subconscious, whereby a summary pops back into conscious memory from time to time.
To illustrate how some people get stressed out by listening to other people talk ... imagine hearing a number of spoken things, and having them replay in simulation in your head, BUT OUT OF YOUR CONTROL ... scary isn't it? Well not all of us were granted the capability to control so many things. All of us have computational limits, and we can only do so much consciously, while the rest is handled by the subconscious.
So, sometimes I too get stressed out from handling too many simultaneous projects ... due to a loss of conscious control over simultaneous simulated choruses, I might have different choruses playing simultaneously regarding unrelated subjects. You can imagine the cacophony of multiple radio stations playing over each other at once ... well, it's not loud, it might be soft, but it certainly presents as a complicated soundscape.
The art, or skill, of managing one's auditory memory to be more performant in such situations ... is simply to identify which choruses regard which subjects ... to herd together related simulations, and to segregate unrelated ones. Then one turns on and off each group of simulations based on what once wants to focus on in the present.
This is an aspect of "executive function" and mental conditioning which isn't often formally taught in schools. But it is the rudimentary form of managing verbal cognition in conscious memory.
I would encourage everyone to dive into such studies from time to time. Also, encourage young children and adults alike to improve themselves in these areas. Sometimes a guide may help, but not always is a guide available.
Best wishes to one, and all.
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