Auditory Processing Fail?

I have recently realised something about auditory processing. Apparently, I'm kind of crap at it.Perhaps.


This links back to a longstanding ... mmm ... difference of opinion between myself and the Spouse over my "not listening" to things. As in, we're sitting down side by side at our respective his 'n hers computers, me watching iView and him playing WoW and chatting away to his guildies. And then he'll say:


"mmmbl mmmblbl mm mmm mbl"


And I'll say:


"..."


Because, of course, I'm watching my program. I don't know what he's said to me. I'm barely even aware words came out of his mouth. In fact, I've always considered it extremely weird that he would expect that I would automatically know that he just said something to me (as opposed to the guildies) - obviously I can't be listening to him at the same time as listening to my TV program. You can't be listening to two things at once, can you?


Can you?


Well apparently, according to a big involved conversation we had on this topic, you can. Or at least I can't but maybe you can.
Apparently, all this time when we've been pursuing our respective evening's entertainments, the Spouse has been chatting with his guildies AND listening to my program AND processing the content of both of these AT THE SAME TIME!


Frankly, this blew me away. I would never have remotely considered that this would be possible. When I'm listening to a thing, I'm listening to ONE thing. My ears are totally tuned to that. Other noise doesn't even register. And if I'm not actively listening to something, I'm not in processing mode at all. Come and say something to me out of the blue and you'll have to wait for the system to boot up before you'll get any meaningful answer.


The question then arises of course - who's normal and who's weird? Am I unusually crap at this task, or is he unusually good?


I was online recently with a person who really does have full-on auditory processing disorder. From his account, he has the worst of both worlds. He can't filter out an auditory input to effective non-existance, but he also can't process more than one at the same time. So multiple people talking at once leaves him with a confused meaningless jumble, nothing to catch hold of.


Which brings us back (of course) to the Small Boy. Is this possibly the source of his language difficulties? Has he inherited neither his dad's ability to process multiple sound channels at once nor his mum's ability to switch focus and filter out the excess?


Complicating this also is the fact that I'm not sure that what I do with filtering sound is really the sort of thing you inherit. It's more a sort of trick I've picked up to make sound more manageable. Problem - I've no real idea how exactly I do it. I've no idea how or when I learnt to do it. I've no idea how to teach it to someone else.