Talk to My Right Ear!
Humans prefer to be addressed in the right ear and are more likely to perform a task when the request is received in the right ear. In a series of three studies, Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the Gabriele d'Annunzio University in Chieti, Italy, showed that a natural side bias is exhibited in everyday human behavior.
Tommasi and Marzoli's three studies specifically observed ear preference during interactions in noisy social environments. In the first study, in which 286 participants were observed while they were talking with loud music in the background, 72% of interactions occurred on the right side of the listener. These results are consistent with the right-ear preference found in both laboratory studies and questionnaires and demonstrate that the side bias is displayed spontaneously outside the laboratory.
The two other studies used variations on communication in similar environments. 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. Visit the September 2009 (Vol. 96, No. 9) issue of Naturwissenschaften.
Infant Sleep Positions and Otitis Media
The recommendation to lay babies on their backs to sleep has reduced sudden infant death syndrome but it also has increased the number of infants with a skull deformity called deformational (or positional) plagiocephaly, or a flattening on the back of the head from repeated pressure on that area. New research suggests that infants with more severe plagiocephaly may have a higher rate of otitis media.
In a study of 1,259 children with deformational plagiocephaly, almost half of the children (49%) had at least one ear infection before their first birthdayСsimilar to the rate in the normal population--but the rate was slightly higher (54%) for children with more severe plagiocephaly.
The results showed "a marked trend" toward a relationship between otitis media-related abnormalities and the severity of plagiocephaly. "The more severe cases (types IV-V) of plagiocephaly had a higher percentage of otitis media than the less severe cases (types I-III)," the researchers note. Visit the Sept. 2009 issue (Vol. 20) of The Journal of Craniofacial Surgery.
Newborn Hearing Screening Follow-up
In a retrospective chart review of 142 infants evaluated from January 2005 to December 2007, a study by the Purdue University Audiology Clinic that found that 17% of infants were older than 3 months at the initial evaluation, and 18% of infants who needed further evaluation were lost to follow-up. None of the infants identified with hearing loss received amplification within one month of diagnosis or began early intervention services by the age of 6 months.
The study confirmed the challenges providers face in providing early intervention services in the university clinic setting. Although more than 98% of all babies born in Indiana are screened prior to hospital discharge, post-screening challenges include a shortage of facilities and qualified personnel to provide follow-up.
The article is in press in the American Journal of Audiology.
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