The role of attention in the differentiation of auditory processing disorders from attention deficit disorders is gaining considerable interest in both the clinical and research arenas. It has been well established that when attention is directed to one ear or the other on traditional dichotic tests, performance can be altered. However, preliminary studies in our laboratory have shown that dich...

Humans apply a minimum intervention principle to regulate treadmill walking, rapidly correcting fluctuations in the task-relevant variable (step speed: SS) while ignoring fluctuations in the task-irrelevant variables (step time: ST; step length: SL). We examined whether the regulation of fluctuations in SS and not in ST and SL depends on high-level, executive function, processes. Young adults w...

The impact of menstrual cyclicity and sex differences on dichotic listening was studied in 25 women and 20 men (aged 20-25 years). Dichotic listening was administered using consonant-vowel (CV) stimuli and tested across three attention conditions. Women were tested at two points in the menstrual cycle (Day 2-5: low oestrogen and progesterone/Low-EP; Day 18-25: high oestrogen and progesterone/Hi...

Dichotic listening (DL) is the most frequently used method to study language lateralization. The current study investigated the effect of voice-onset-time (VOT) in dichotic listening with consonant-vowel (CV) syllables. Eighty-nine subjects with normal hearing and overall right-ear-advantage (REA) were tested with a PC version of the DL test. Voiced and unvoiced stop-consonants were used in com...

Numerous studies have reported that women believe they are more susceptible to left-right confusion than men. Indeed, some studies have also found sex differences in behavioural tasks. It has been suggested that women have more difficulties with left-right discrimination, because they are less lateralised than men and a lower degree of lateralisation might lead to more left-right confusion (LRC...

The assumption that ignoring irrelevant sound in a serial recall situation is identical to ignoring a non-target channel in dichotic listening is challenged. Dichotic listening is open to moderating effects of working memory capacity (Conway et al., 2001) whereas irrelevant sound effects (ISE) are not (Beaman, 2004). A right ear processing bias is apparent in dichotic listening, whereas the bia...

Studies using dichotic listening tests and electroencephalographic (EEG) measures of hemispheric asymmetry have reported evidence of abnormal brain laterality in patients having depressive disorders. We present new findings from a multigenerational study of risk for depression, in which perceptual asymmetry was measured in dichotic listening tests of emotional and verbal processing. Biological ...