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Comment by DenisM | Hacker News Reader

My theory is that poor sound fidelity makes our brains work in over-drive doing speech recognition on the cell phone. The same patter-recognition circuits are not therefore available to for other work, leaving things undetected.

In particular I find it much easier to talk over skype compared to cell phone.

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A major factor is the lack of context. When the people conversing are colocated, they share a context and their conversation respects their context. When the people conversing are talking over data pipes, they do not share context and their conversation subsequently does not respect the context.

For example, when I am a passenger in a car, I typically pause the conversation momentarily if the driver is trying to change lanes or exit the freeway. If I'm walking down the street with a friend, I might pause and stare at a clown instead of dumping a constant stream of audio into my friend's ear.

> For example, when I am a passenger in a car, I typically pause the conversation momentarily if the driver is trying to change lanes or exit the freeway. If I'm walking down the street with a friend, I might pause and stare at a clown instead of dumping a constant stream of audio into my friend's ear.

I think you've nailed it there. It's also about expectations. If you're driving and you suddenly stop speaking (because you need more attention on the road for whatever reason), you know your passengers will understand. But if you're speaking on the phone, you know it will appear weird, so you don't do it (at least not as much)

I wonder if talking on any phone puts you in a disconnected and disembodied world. Conversing on a phone is quite unnatural.

Yes, it does. This is the problem with making phone calls while driving. Even if you use a headset to keep your hands free (as is mandatory in many countries), you are still so distracted that you are almost as likely to cause an accident as you would be if you drive while holding a phone in one hand and far more likely than when you chat with another person driving with you in the car.

That is what the article says. This thread raises the issue of cell phone fidelity vs. skype (or land line etc) fidelity being a factor.

Many people have moderate hearing problems which makes this even worse. They may not even realize they have mild hearing problems because it may not interfere with anything else in their life. Some people supplement what their ears pick up with lip-reading and other contextual clues to fill in the gaps. Those forms of input don't exist over the phone. This causes phone calls to be something that requires quite high levels of concentration to really follow.

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