I can assure you that by now, my brain is conditioned to lock into the four-digit code as soon as it can, entirely ignoring everything around it, including the words to the left.

I’m an avid reader. But there are limits to what I can process, and our world has become so full of noise that it has become a coping strategy for brains to selectively ignore stuff if they feel it’s not important at the moment. That effect becomes even more pronounced as the brain deteriorates with age.