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Eye contact blocks listening
People who are listening hard tend to close their eyes, and that is no coincidence. With eyes on a speaker, the visual system takes over. They see the mouth move but hear their own thoughts more than the words. Closing the eyes is one of the best ways to build a cone of auditory attention.
People with low or no vision do this well and can focus their attention on particular locations. Great pianists like Glenn Gould often turn their heads to the side, and Stevie Wonder, who was blind, looked away from the keys and oriented an ear toward them. People who are not sighted tend to have better pitch.
Hearing varies enormously across animals. The two with the best hearing in the world, many orders of magnitude better than humans, are the elephant and the moth.
Why does vision crowd out hearing?
The brain devotes more cortex to vision than to any other sense, and the senses compete for attention. Studies of inattentional deafness show that people engaged in a demanding visual task often miss clearly audible sounds. Brain imaging has found that visual tasks can lower activity in auditory areas. Closing the eyes removes that competition.
Why do pianists turn their heads sideways?
Orienting an ear toward the sound source changes the arrival time and loudness between the two ears, which helps the brain locate and sort sound. Glenn Gould was known for hunching low over the keyboard and humming along as he played. Stevie Wonder, blind since shortly after birth, also played with his head moving to one side. Musicians often report that these positions help them hear their own playing.
How good is an elephant's hearing?
Elephants hear low frequencies far below the range of humans, down to infrasound at around 14 to 16 hertz. Their large ears and skull bones carry vibrations, and they also sense rumbles through their feet. Moths are notable for a different reason: the greater wax moth has been measured responding to sound up to 300 kilohertz, according to a 2013 study led by James Windmill at the University of Strathclyde. That is higher than any other animal tested.
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