Most people are right-ear dominant for language, which means that verbal information presented to the right ear is easier for them to attend to. When given no instructions, they tend to focus on the voice presented to the right ear. In fact, when asked to track what was said in the right ear, the lonely and the nonlonely did equally well. In contrast, focusing on the nondominant ear—the left ear—requires bandwidth. It requires executive control to override the natural proclivity to focus on the right and instead to attend to the left. And now the lonely did significantly less well.
