Does this get worse with age?

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Multitasking, blocking out, whatever it’s called.

When I was younger, I remember being able to block out conversations in the background and do school assignments. Of course, it’s a different story if it caused sensory overload. But if it didn’t overload me, I could still work.

Now, no matter the volume, I can’t think at all with background conversations. I can’t think in my classrooms, or when my family starts talking or watching TV. And I have exams coming up. I have earplugs and earmuffs, but they get uncomfortable after a while.

I read something that says multi tasking and distraction blocking gets worse with age. Was this the case with you? Perhaps I’m older than I think

dr. daniel amen MD says these kinda symptoms are part and parcel of ADHD. when i was on Strattera i was much better at multitasking and blocking out extraneous stimuli and focusing.

Yes, it can. My ASD therapist just confirmed this fact to me last week. She said that our sensory tolerance usually weakens as we age. Our nervous system often gets exhausted so we can't filter stimuli as efficiently.

It can get better or worse depending on many factors. It can get much worse and then get better or visa versa. I don't know if anyone is interested in how this works and why. For one thing, when a woman is going through menopause symptoms can become exaggerated. I've had the t.v.on for the last ghour when I've been writing and it has not bothered me at all, but then after beginning to write on this thread I realized I reached an overload and had to mute it. The question is what caused the overload? Is it that I was doing it for a while, that a different show came on where the voice of one person was louder and/or that this topic caused me to focus on the noise.

A big breakthrough for me a few years ago is that I got very angry at one of my neighbors for having the t.v. on so loud that the sound was leaking through the wall, and then realized it was my own t.v. in the other room at a volume that generally doesn't bother me at all. That's when I began to realize there was also a psychological component in my case. Very enlightening. This is not to say that a person cannot be more sensitive. Put fabreeze near me and I will attack you. (Just kidding, or am I?:-)

While we're on the subject of TV noise ... I hate it when you have to adjust the volume because a commercial came on... or if you switch from streaming to broadcast, or vice versa. I wish I had a tv that could auto-adjust the changing decibel levels.

Some shows have a very soft almost whispering speech level, and you can only catch the dialogue if you turn sound way up. And then you get blasted with a commercial.

Rant over.

Some smart TVs today have a feature called Auto Volume that lets sound volume be consistent between content and commercials.
Refer to: How to Level the Volume on a TV When the Commercials Come On

Back on point---a person's mind can amplify certain responses, both of pleasure and pain, and this can go up and down in relationship to context and various mental distortions, and a person does have some control over this, maybe not as much in the short term re a specific incident, though that, too, but in the long term there can be a shift as ones health and attitude that can affect certain sensitivites.. The same exact noise--faint t.v. coming from the other room-- became amplified in my mind and affected my perception of the intensity of sensation when I mistakenly thought it was coming from my neighbor's rather than my own t.v. So what that noise represented to me affected my response to it, even causing severe discomfort and physical/emotional pain.

Then I started going into this very deeply and it struck me that the WAY I was framing myself as autistic (not to deny that I am) was amplifying certain kinds of responses and creating certain affects. For instance a person may have certain feelings of alienation throughout their life, but when I started seeing myself as an alien because I was autistic, this way of framing greatly amplified my response of feeling alienated; but then, also, I was in a group of people who were also alienated, and that gave me comfort and made me feel I belong ha ha. The worse part is, though I myself did fall under the spell of it--I did not join a group of so-called aliens who are fighting the other people, the neurotypicals or whatever you want to call them. This is not to suggest that there not some kind of social injustice in certain situations or nothing ever worth joining together and fighting for, but do not let the body snatchers get ya.

I find it more difficult to filter out extraneous stimuli. Either that or I just don't care about it anymore. I just leave the environment that is overstimulating and tough what others think.

Oh, thanks Jimmy! I have a smart TV. I'll look for that feature. (Like many people, I don't use a tenth of the capabilities of my various electronic devices.)

I think it gets worse with stress. The more stress you have in your life the more difficulty you have.
Most people do get more responsibilities as they age, but not always. For instance, some people may find that having a job in their special interest to be less stressful than going to school. Or that being in a good relationship to be less stressful than dating. Or being retired on a good pension being less stressful than working as a school teacher.

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Right; a lot of it is contextual. Feelings and sensations can become amplified with stress, plus some people really are born more sensitive in certain ways. What concerns me and the point I keep emphasizing is that the way a person thinks about things can play into the amplification and create a syndrome. If you see yourself doing it if that is what you are doing, to some extent this will free you from some of these symptoms which may be psychologically amplified. Also, I think to some degree in many autistic people there is a tendency to amplify certain aspects in certain ways that really is genetic and is, or at least to some degree in primitive times was, a survival function, but this attribute or 'attribute' has gone wild. There needs to be some kind of mental function outside of basic genetic attributes and acquired traits and/or conditioned responses that is to some degree regulating this. I think it is sometimes referred to as executive function. Now if you are allergic to febreeze, an air freshener in the US, which even the mention of causes me to shudder, I am not really sure if executive function can lessen the physical response, or if your eyes are very sensitive to light as in my case, this is maybe not a good example, but I heard a sea gull squawking outside my window and thought one of my neighbors got a puppy and I was really angry that they were letting it make noise; my mind created all kinds of fantasies about it. OK that was just a mistake, as the t.v. example, but I learned something. Interesting when you know it is a sea gull and not someone's puppy or your own t.v. in the other room and not your neighbor's t.v.. then you not only don't get angry but also it does not bother you as much.

The implementation of dynamic range compression solves this issue; I use that when listening to recordings of individuals who are rather quiet, because I do not wish to increase the volume of my speakers to a level which is sufficiently high to result in the damaging of the aforementioned speakers.

what equipment do you use to implement this?

VideoLAN's VLC natively supports dynamic range compression, and, if your sound card has a line-in connector, then you should be able to use your computer as a passthrough device before outputting the signal to whatever speakers you are using.

sounds a bit more advanced [computer-wise] than i have expertise in. but in my music i have been known to use selective and frequency band specific compression and low-level amplification when making CD copies.

youse guys are too technikle for me.