Echoes

You may already know that I heart RadioLab. This week while walking, I've been catching up on my podcasts and on my learnin'. On RadioLab's After Birth podcast they were discussing with a developmental psychologist, Charles Fernyhough, how babies see/sense the world. What is an infant experiencing? One hypothesis on the auditory experience is that babies hear echoes. The brain has to develop the ability to screen out the echoes and only hear a voice or a sound once. I thought this was an interesting idea, but received greater insight today.

My co-worker, Candy, and I were conducting a webinar. She was on her phone and I was on mine in the cubicle right next door. This meant that as she spoke I heard her in both ears, but with a tiny time delay for the phone ear. All I could think was, "No wonder babies sleep all the time. This whole sorting through echoes thing is EXHAUSTING."

Made me curious about the book written by Mr. Fernyhough himself, called A Thousand Days of Wonder. Anybody read it?