You just ordered a pizza from your favorite restaurant and can't wait for it to get here. As time passes, everything you hear sounds like a car driving by. What accounts for your "heightened" sense of hearing?

Signal detection theory

Explanation:

Signal Detection Theory refers to the tendency of the people to get distorted by the random information and how it affects their decision-making process. In the cause of humans, the human body acts as a detecting system and it get affected by different signals. This theory explains how the random patterns affect the information-bearing system. As per the question, the sound of a vehicle serves as the random pattern which distracts the detecting system and it is a classic example of signal detection theory.