In a world that values information processing, it's easy to forget that we are ourselves the ultimate information processors. Even in infancy, the healthy human brain takes in a breadth and depth of data unparalleled by any pile of Pentium chips and does so largely without our conscious awareness. The secret to this triumph of gray matter over silicon lies not in processing speed or raw gigabytes of memory storage - certainly there are computers which are both faster and vaster than the human brain. The secret is a trick called habituation. Understanding habituation may be one key to helping your child cope with what he may otherwise experience as chaos.
Habituation means familiarization.
Habituation is what allows you to implicitly tune out the hum of your computer, the rub of fabric against your skin and even the sound of the kids arguing downstairs so that you direct your attention to these words. If you had to pay conscious attention to every little sound and sight and taste and smell, you would never have a rational thought. Without the ability to habituate, the species could never have survived. To illustrate this idea, consider two distinct groups of individuals which may represent extremes along a continuum of habituation ability. At one extreme, autism may be characterized by a relative inability to habituate.