- Dichotic listening
In
cognitive psychology , dichotic listening is a procedure commonly used to investigateselective attention in theauditory system . In dichotic listening, two different auditory stimuli (usually speech) are presented to the participant simultaneously, one to eachear , normally using a set ofheadphones . Participants are asked to attend to one or (in a divided-attention experiment) both of the messages. They may later be asked about the content of either message.In a selective attention experiment, the participant may be asked to repeat aloud the content of the attended message, a task known as shadowing. As Cherry (1953)Cherry, E. C. (1953). Some experiments on the recognition of speech, with one and two ears. "Journal of the Acoustical Society of America" 25, pp. 975–979.] found, people recall even the shadowed message poorly, suggesting that most of the processing necessary to shadow the attended message occurs in
working memory and is not preserved in the long-term store. Performance on the unattended message is, of course, much worse. Participants are generally able to report almost nothing about the content of the unattended message. In fact, a change from English to German in the unattended channel usually goes unnoticed. However, participants are able to report that the unattended message is speech rather than non-verbal content.Tim Rand [http://www.haskins.yale.edu/publications/pub-r.html] demonstrated dichotic perception in the late 1960s and early 1970s at
Haskins Laboratories Rand, T. C. (1974). Dichotic release from masking for speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 55, 678-680.] . This demonstration was originally known as "the Rand effect" but was subsequently renamed as "dichotic release from masking" and then "dichotic perception" or "dichotic listening." Another example of a dichotic listening experiment is Jim Cutting's (1976) demonstrationCutting, J. E. (1976). Auditory and linguistic processes in speech perception: inferences from six fusions in dichotic listening. "Psychological Review" 83, pp. 114–140.] atHaskins Laboratories that listeners could correctly identify syllables when different components of the syllable were presented to different ears. Theformant s of vowel sounds and their relation are crucial in differentiating vowel sounds. Yet even though listeners heard two separate signals (no ear received a 'complete' vowel sound), they could identify the syllable sounds.Dichotic listening can also be used to test the hemispheric asymmetry of a cognitive function such as
language processing . In the early 60s Doreen Kimura reported that verbal stimuli presented dichotically gave a right ear advantage (REA) [Kimura, D (1961). Cerebral dominance and the perception of verbal stimuli. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 15, 166-171] . This was interpreted as showing the result of the structure of the auditory nerves and the left sided dominance for language processing [Kimura, D. (1967). Functional asymmetry of the brain in dichotic listening. Cortex, 3, 163-178] . In the late 1960s and early 1970s Donald Shankweiler [http://www.haskins.yale.edu/staff/shankweiler.html] andMichael Studdert-Kennedy [http://www.haskins.yale.edu/staff/msk.html] ofHaskins Laboratories used a dichotic listening technique (presenting different nonsense syllables simultaneously to opposite ears) to demonstrate the dissociation ofphonetic (speech) andauditory (nonspeech) perception by finding that phonetic structure devoid of meaning is an integral part of language, typically processed in the leftcerebral hemisphere Studdert-Kennedy, M., & Shankweiler, D. P. (1970). Hemispheric specialization for speech perception. "Journal of the Acoustical Society of America", 48, 579-594.] Studdert-Kennedy, M., Shankweiler, D., & Schulman, S. (1970). Opposed effects of a delayed channel on perception of dichotically and monotically presented CV syllables. "Journal of the Acoustical Society of America", 48, 599-602.] Studdert-Kennedy, M., Shankweiler, D., & Pisoni, D. (1972). Auditory and phonetic processes in speech perception: Evidence from a dichotic study. "Journal of Cognitive Psychology", 2, 455-466.] . A dichotic listening performance advantage for one ear is interpreted as indicating a processing advantage in the contralateral hemisphere. In another example, Sidtis (1981)Sidtis, J. J. (1981). The complex tone test: Implications for the assessment of auditory laterality effects. "Neuropsychologia" 19, pp. 103–112.] found that healthy adults have a left-ear advantage on a dichotic pitch recognition experiment. He interpreted this result as indicating right-hemisphere dominance for pitch discrimination. For further details about dichotic listening inneuropsychology , see K. Hugdahl (Ed.): Handbook of Dichotic Listening. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 1988.References
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