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  1. #1
    Moderator belgareth's Avatar
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    Default Hearing preference?

    visit-red-300x50PNG
    So, does this mean that when approaching a woman or in a sales situation you should be to the

    targets' right?


    Most People

    Prefer Right Ear for Listening

    Robin Lloyd
    LiveScience

    Senior Editor
    livescience Senior Editor– Wed Jun 24, 2009

    Most people prefer to be addressed in their right ears in everyday settings and are more likely to do a

    favor when the request is received in their right ears rather than their left ones, new research suggests.


    A well-known asymmetry in humans is the right ear

    dominance for listening to verbal stimuli, which is thought to reflect

    the brain's left hemisphere superiority for

    processing verbal information. This preference for hearing with the right ear is also found in rats, Japanese

    macaques, harpy eagles, sea lions and dogs.

    However, until now, the majority of studies looking at

    ear preference in human

    communication have been controlled laboratory studies. There has very little published observational evidence of

    spontaneous ear dominance in everyday human behavior.

    Now, in a series of three studies in Italian discotheques, Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli of the University

    "Gabriele d'Annunzio" in Chieti, Italy, have observed ear preference during social interactions in noisy night club

    environments. The findings were recently published online on June 20 by the journal Naturwissenschaften.


    Hearing in discotheques


    In the first study, 286 clubbers were observed

    while they were talking, with loud music in the background. In total, 72 percent of interactions occurred on the

    right side of the listener. These results are consistent with the right-ear preference found in laboratory studies

    and questionnaires, and they demonstrate that the side bias is spontaneously displayed outside the laboratory.


    In the second study, the researchers approached

    160 clubbers and mumbled an inaudible, meaningless utterance (such as "babababa") and waited for the subjects to

    turn their head and offer either their left of their right ear. They then asked subjects for

    a cigarette (in Italian the request

    specifically was "Hai una sigaretta?" which can be translated in English as "Do you have a cigarette?"). Overall, 58

    percent offered their right ear for listening and 42 percent their left. No link was found between the number of

    cigarettes obtained and the ear receiving the request.

    In the third study, the researchers intentionally addressed 176 clubbers in either their right or their left

    ear when asking for a cigarette. They obtained significantly more cigarettes when they spoke to the clubbers' right

    ear compared with their left.

    Preferences of

    brain hemispheres

    Taken together, these results

    confirm a right ear/left hemisphere advantage for verbal communication and distinctive specialization of the two

    halves of the brain for approach

    and avoidance behavior, Tommasi said.

    "The

    difference between the two ears is not only attributable to a different performance of the ears per se (which has

    been nonetheless documented in previous work), but to preferential processing by the left and right hemispheres,

    that are wired more strongly with the contralateral ears," Tommasi told LiveScience. (Contralateral means "on the

    opposite side," so in this case, it means that right ear sounds are processed more on the left side of the brain,

    and left ear sounds are processed more on the right.)

    The brain's left hemisphere is more involved in language processing, which justifies the preferential use of

    the right (contralateral) ear for listening in everday situations, he said.


    "The left hemisphere, moreover, is more involved

    in approach behavior, whereas the right has a role in withdrawal and avoidance behavior: these facts probably are at

    the basis of the slight difference in proneness to offer cigarettes in the experiments reported," Tommasi said.


    Right ears and information


    Not only do humans prefer to hear in the right

    ear, we actually hear information better in our right ears, Tommasi said.


    But the question of which ear "hears better" is

    not that simple, according to previous research, he added.

    "It depends on the type of input: speech is heard 'better' with the right ear, if the characteristics to

    be processed are those connected to the sounds of a given language (i.e phonemes), whereas the left ear might have

    an advantage in discriminating non-phonemic aspects of speech (i.e. prosody, emotional cues, etc.)," Tommasi

    said.

    And for music, environmental sounds and noises, there are differences between the capacities of the brain

    hemispheres and thus the ears.

    Pitch, timbre and loudness are discriminated better with left ear (right

    hemisphere), but duration is better discriminated with the right ear (left hemisphere).

    "As you can see, the

    picture is not so simple, but when it comes to the informational content of language the right ear predominates,"

    Tommasi said.

    Regarding their latest discotheque findings, Tommasi and Marzoli conclude: "Our studies corroborate

    the idea of a common ancestry - in humans and other species - of lateralized behavior during social interactions,

    not only for species-specific vocal communication, but also for affective

    responses."

    The research was part of a project

    supported by the Commission of the European Communities.

    To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

    Thomas Jefferson

  2. #2
    Moderator idesign's Avatar
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    Default

    It depends on which hand the

    checkbook is in. If its in the right, and she's left-handed, you should speak right into her left ear. If its in

    the left, she's probably righting herself, which means she's left of center and writing from your checkbook. If

    I'm right, and she's left without checks, you'll walk right into left field, where hot dogs are banned, not that

    every woman is looking for sausages when all they want is Mr. Right. Left to me, I'd go right to the question:

    "which ear do you want me in?". Hope this helps.


  3. #3
    Moderator belgareth's Avatar
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    Default

    Gee, thanks! That was

    wonderfully enlightening. What would I do without your clarity of thought?
    To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.

    Thomas Jefferson

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