Yanny or Laurel?

Cheryl Gowin and Dennis Gowin.  Call us at our counseling practice with your feedback, comments, issues, or questions at 434-808-2637.

Have you been asked the question, “What do you hear, Yanny or Laurel?” There is a recording going around and when you play it, some people hear Yanny and some Laurel.  For me, I hear Yanny, even when I try to hear Laurel.  The general public seems to be siding with Laurel; 53 percent of people responding to a survey on Twitter said they hear “Laurel,” and 47 percent hear “Yanny.”

How do the experts explain this?

Patricia Keating, a linguistics professor and the director of the phonetics lab at U.C.L.A., provides this explanation: “The energy concentrations for Ya are similar to those for La, n is similar to r; i is close to l.”  She goes on to say that, what we hear depends on what part (what frequency range) of the signal we attend to.  Elliot Freeman, a perception researcher at City University of London, said our brains can selectively tune into different frequency bands once we know what to listen out for, ‘like a radio.’  “What one hears first depends on the how the sound is reproduced, e.g. on an iPhone speaker or headphones, and on an individual’s own ‘ear print’ which might determine their sensitivity to different frequencies,” he said.

Ok, so this is fun but does it matter?  Let’s talk about how this phenomenon relates to our communications in general.  Now, Yanny versus Laurel does not really seem to matter in the overall aspects of life.  However, how does the fact that one person can hear something completely different from another affect our communication process?

Study.com provides a course titled Business 111: Principles of Supervision.  Within this course is the chapter: What is the Communication Process? – Definition & Steps.

Professor Shawn Grimsley defines communication as a process, and states that if the process breaks down, communication will fail.  The components that build the model of the communication process are:

• A sender encodes information.

• The sender selects a channel of communication by which to send the message.

• The receiver receives the message.

• The receiver decodes the message.

• The receiver provides feedback to the sender.

Are you thinking, great that is what all the PhD’s have to say but what does this have to do with me?  Does this sound like a description of a problem about to happen?  Person A says something to Person B.  Person B is operating on a different frequency from Person A.  Person B hears something completely different than Person A meant to say.  How many times in our lives have we thought we said something completely different from what someone said they heard?  Or, you were 100% certain of what you heard, but later, you were told that is not what was said.  Yes, this can happen at home, at work, at church, actually anywhere the communication process is trying to take place.

Look back at the communication process.  What do you think is the most important step?  The communication process is the means by which data and information is transmitted between two people.  The last step, providing feedback, is the only step where the two people actually interact or talk with each other.  The last step is the most important step because that is the step where I make sure that what I heard is actually, what you said.

Do you find it interesting that in debate of Yanny verses Laurel no one has gone back to the person who made the recording to find out what he or she actually said?  It seems everyone, including the White House staff, has joined the debate on what is being said.  Everyone appears more than willing to express what he or she heard while no one is asking what was said.

What is the moral of this story?  For effective communication, in your marriage, between your family members, at work, or at church, make sure you add the step of circling back to the person you are talking with to confirm that what you heard is what he or she said.

A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.  Proverbs 18:2

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Call us with your feedback, comments, issues, or questions; our phone number is 434-808-2637.