The sound of screech
Christoph Reuter and Michael Oehler researched why certain sounds, like nails on a chalk board, make your skin crawl. They discovered that it’s not nessicarly the sound in the squeak but the frequncy/tone of the sound that is annoying to someone. Although, knowing that the sound is coming from a chalkboard lead to more discomfort rather than knowing you’re listening to your favorite song. The two scientist conducted an expriment that involved some volunteers listening to 104 sounds of nails on a chalk board and they would rate the level of discomfort. They measured changes in vital signs and skin conductivity-stress indicatrs-while replaying the two most annoying. The sound frencentcies that they played ranged to 12000 hertz. Taking out the lower or higher frequencies didn’t lower the discomforting feeling you get. But when they took out the one that were4000-5000 hertz it made the sound a little more plesant. The researchers say that it may be that the ear canal naturally resonates with these frequencies and it amplifies the everyday sounds we listen to. Josh McDermott said that this sensativity is the reason why people with noisy jobs expirience hearing loss first in this frequency range.
I chose this article because I cannot stand sound of nails on a chalk board and i never knew why. so this article halped me better understand why. The author was informing the reader about why annoying sounds seem to make our skin crawl. This new discovery can help people better understand why they hate certain sounds. Also, understanding hiw frequency work and how they affect your hear can help with hearing loss. I don’t think there really ias a moral/political aspect to this news, because there wasn’t any political views to this topic and I don’t think you’d really learn a lesson from ths either. I never really knew why I hated the sound of nails on a chalk board but this article helped me understand. I thought it was very interesting that it was the frequencies that made you cringe at the sound.
