LONDON, ONT.

So you didn't hear her when she told you to take out the trash.

Don't get defensive: Get scientific.

Long-married couples, at least those under age 60, can tune out the voice of the other according to new research.

Scientists knew we can pick out a familiar voice from a room of speakers, but researchers at Queen's University in Kingston have found we also can single out a familiar voice to exclude to better hear a stranger.

"People can exploit knowledge of a highly familiar voice (their spouse's) not only to track it better in the presence of an interfering stranger's voice, but also, crucially, to ignore it," researchers wrote in study published in Psychological Science.

Researchers picked 23 married couples who each had been living together at least 18 years. Here's how their listening skills were tested:

Each person was recorded saying a sentence that included a colour, number and one of four key words.

Each person listened to tapes of two people saying different sentences at the same time, then recalled which colour and number went with a key word.

People generally fared best when asked to recall what a spouse said. But they fared better recalling what a stranger said when the other sentence was spoken by a spouse rather than by another stranger.

"People can hold a novel voice better when the familiar voice is interfering," said Ingrid Johnsrude, a cognitive neuroscientist who specializes in learning how the brain processes sound.

Among their findings:

Husbands were a bit more apt to forget what their wife said than vice-versa.

After age 60, people lost some ability to focus on a stranger's voice but retained the ability to hear their spouse.

The findings, taken together, suggest our ability to hear doesn't simply diminish because that sensory capacity diminishes. too. Hearing loss may be partly rooted in our brain's reduced capacity to make sense of competing sounds, a complex endeavour in the din of a cocktail party.

jonathan.sher@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @JSHERatLFPress