Someone did a study of why mobile phone usage around you is irritating. There are the obvious noise and attention reasons — but another big irritation seems to be only hearing half the conversation.
But loudness wasn’t the worst problem with mobile phones. In fact, even phone conversations in a normal voice received worse scores than face-to-face conversations. The worst problem seems to be that conversations on mobile phones are more noticeable than face-to-face conversations. This seems odd, since two people talking together project twice the amount of audio as one person talking on the phone.
Unfortunately, Monk and his colleagues don’t provide the final answer; more research is called for. But the problem seems to be that people pay more attention when they hear only half a conversation. It’s apparently easier to tune out the continuous drone of a complete conversation, in which two people take turns speaking, than it is to ignore a person speaking and falling silent in turns.
Hmmm. Is it that the sound level fluctuates that way? Or that we listen in, even unconsciously, and aren’t able to track the meaning of the sounds we’re hearing (or have to work at it, to mentally fill in the missing half of the conversation)?
Anyway, interesting.
(via GeekPress)