I’m sure we all have been ignored when someone is engrossed in a film! But did you know this is actually a phenomenon called “inattentional deafness”. 👂
Studies on humans revealed that concentration on visual tasks will render you temporarily deaf to normal sounds.
🧠 Brain scans have showed that people do not purposely ignore known sounds, but that they actually aren’t hearing them in the first place!
The findings support a shared audio-visual centre, which, when depleted under load, leads to failures of sensory perception and awareness.
Example:
You turn down the music in your car so you can see better? Especially when we want to focus on reading the street names.
🐕 So how does this relate to dogs?
The thalamus is the area of the brain that’s is responsible for relaying sensory information such as hearing, sight, touch and pain. It also enables the dog to concentrate on one thing at a time.
So just like your partner watching a film, when your dog is sniffing the ‘pee mail’ and all the wonderful smells on his walk, they will very likely not hear you and why should they? It’s their walk after all!
Wait for your dog to finish “reading” then call him back!
UK SCENT SPORT 