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Incoming stimuli are converted to neurological representations that are compared to patterns stored in long-term memory (LTM).
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If there is a match and sufficient attention is paid to the signal, the LTM representation is activated (this activated state is called short-term memory or STM). This matching and activation process, known as decoding, must be done quickly and accurately.
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Information can reside in STM for a very short period of time, unless attention is devoted to maintaining this information (e.g., rehearsal or active processing-thinking about what has been presented).
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For most individuals, linguistic information is processed in the left hemisphere, while suprasegmental information is processed in the right hemisphere; these are somehow integrated "on the fly."
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The processed information must be retained in the same order as presented.
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Individuals often must listen in the presence of competing noise; in order to attend to the "target" stimuli in noise, the brain directs attention to those neurons corresponding to the stimuli of interest, while ignoring/inhibiting the neurons corresponding to "competing" stimuli.
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A separate process over time involves the establishment of individual sound families (phonemes) and its symbolic representations.
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