On that note
Last week ( 1/26/07), we looked at gender differences in musical preferences. The quality of the sound may be a factor as well. McCown et al (1997) found that males displayed a greater preference for "enhanced bass" in music. Interestingly, Mary Ann Clawson (1999) notes that women are overrepresented as bass players in rock bands. Differences in the genders ability to hear certain frequencies may influence this; Jerger et al (1993) found that men (on average) displayed greater hearing loss over 1kHz, whereas women (on average) displayed more hearing loss below 1kHz.
When I was a kid, it seemed like every adult in my life had hearing troubles. "You have to speak up to talk to grandma" and "You know I can't hear out of my right ear" were nearly as common statements as the prompting "what do you say?" But one factoid that got trotted out to me over and over again was the idea that adults couldn't hear high sounds as well as kids could, which prompted me to start speaking as low in my register as possible by the time I was eight or nine. This concept is part of the idea behind the "Mosquito" (NYT, 11/29/05), a sound supposedly inaudible to adults but annoying to teenagers, which has been co-opted as a "teacher-proof ringtone" (NPR, 5/26/06). Before anyone else says it: it seems that if women are evolutionarily built for monitoring children, then retaining higher-pitched hearing would be more important for them. However, my suspicion is that this probably has more to do with aging hearing loss versus occupational hearing loss. I would be interested to see results specifically from people who worked in high-noise factories for decades, and see if there's a gender difference there.
When I was a kid, it seemed like every adult in my life had hearing troubles. "You have to speak up to talk to grandma" and "You know I can't hear out of my right ear" were nearly as common statements as the prompting "what do you say?" But one factoid that got trotted out to me over and over again was the idea that adults couldn't hear high sounds as well as kids could, which prompted me to start speaking as low in my register as possible by the time I was eight or nine. This concept is part of the idea behind the "Mosquito" (NYT, 11/29/05), a sound supposedly inaudible to adults but annoying to teenagers, which has been co-opted as a "teacher-proof ringtone" (NPR, 5/26/06). Before anyone else says it: it seems that if women are evolutionarily built for monitoring children, then retaining higher-pitched hearing would be more important for them. However, my suspicion is that this probably has more to do with aging hearing loss versus occupational hearing loss. I would be interested to see results specifically from people who worked in high-noise factories for decades, and see if there's a gender difference there.