I have the same feeling and I believe that the initial L of Laurel really strongly shapes the rest of the word. When I move the slider towards Yanny I can still always hear Laurel but I can distinguish the "yaew" that makes Yanny; it's very distinct from the L. I assume that people who naturally hear Yanny first have the same understanding with the weird "yaew" hiding the L. If I'm just expecting Larry I can only sense the deformation as a weird vibration in the sound.

Also I checked on a couple of videos to test my hearing range because I expected it to be quite damaged and assumed that was the main factor and even though it's not a very good form of testing I'm now more convinced that it's the brain treating slight variations differently, with priming playing a strong influencing factor.