This study examines when external auditive noise can enhance performance in a dichotic listening and a visuo-spatial working memory task. Noise is typically conceived of as being detrimental for cognitive performance; however, given the mechanism of stochastic resonance (SR), a certain amount of noise can benefit performance. In particular we predict that low performers will be aided by noise w...

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the degree of semantic processing for unattended words. In a dichotic listening task, each participant was required to attend selectively to either a word sequence in one ear or a speech passage in the opposite ear. The selective listening was confirmed by attenuated P1-N1 and N400 waves of the event-related brain potential to unattended words. The ...

This article presents an overview of our studies in elderly and Alzheimer patients employing Kimura's dichotic digits paradigm as a measure for left hemispheric predominance for processing language stimuli. In addition to structural brain mechanisms, we demonstrated that attention modulates the direction and degree of ear asymmetry in dichotic listening. Elderly showed increasingly more difficu...

Seniors often have more difficulty understanding speech than younger adults, particularly in noisy environments. While loss in peripheral hearing sensitivity explains many of the listening problems of elderly persons, age-related declines in general cognitive skill and central auditory processing also appear to contribute. In this article, we focus primarily on the effects of age on central aud...

To measure lateralization of voice recognition abilities in normal subjects, listeners identified both the speaker (a famous male) and the word spoken on each trial in a dichotic listening paradigm. The voice identification task resulted in a zero ear advantage, which differed significantly from the significant right ear advantage found for word identification. This suggests that voice and word...

In a previous study with normal-hearing listeners, we evaluated consonant identification masked by two or more spectrally contiguous bands of noise, with asynchronous square-wave modulation applied to neighboring bands. Speech recognition thresholds were 5.1-8.5 dB better when neighboring bands were presented to different ears (dichotic) than when all bands were presented to one ear (monaural),...

Previous research has demonstrated that psychopaths exhibit abnormal language lateralization, and it has been proposed that psychopaths may be characterized by abnormal processing asymmetries in other domains as well [Hare, (1998). Psychopathy, affect, and behavior. In D. J. Cooke, A. E. Forth, & R. D. Hare (Eds.), Psychopathy: theory, research and implications for society (pp. 105–137). Nether...

There are numerous recent reports of low-level temporal asymmetries favouring the left hemisphere, and increasing speculation that the left hemisphere's relative superiority at linguistic processing may be related to these asymmetries. The present study sought to test this claim by assessing linguistic lateralization with the Fused Dichotic Words Test and visual temporal asymmetries with a late...