Dichotic Test

KUNNAMPALLIL GEJO JOHN BASLP, MASLP AUDIOLOGIST
KUNNAMPALLIL GEJO MASLP
DICHOTIC LISTENING
Dichotic listening is a listening condition in which two different messages are presented to two ears simultaneously ,but different information to each ear
Monotic ,a listening situation in which the
stimulus is applied to only one ear. Diotic, the same stimulus applied to two ears Dichotic ,different stimuli applied to each of the two ears simultaneously.
FACTORS AFFECTING DICHOTIC LISTENING
FACTORS AFFECTING DICHOTIC LISTENING
There are various factors known to affect dichotic listening. They can be mainly classified into: Stimulus related task Subject related task
Stimulus related factors could be:
Intensity, frequency, temporal aspect (lag effect), phonetic effect, signal to noise ratio, synthetic versus non synthetic ratio, material used, band width. Subject related tasks could be: Ear effect, age, gender, attention, practice effect, response mode.
Stimulus Related Factors

1) Temporal Aspect (lag effect) When two different auditory signals are presented simultaneously one to each ear, one of them is visually perceived as having a greater perceptual salience than the other. This is known as ear advantage. A part from this, when one signal lags another signal in a ear then lagging signal will be perceived better. This is called lag effect.
The amount of time separation between message onset to overcome the right ear advantage (REA) was investigated by Berlin et al. (1972). They found that when one of the CV trailed the other by 30-60 msec the trailing CV become more intelligible then when it was given simultaneously. This time advantage occurred to the lagging syllable and no to the leading syllable (Strddert-Kennedy, Shankdeder & Schumann, 1940).
). This was supported by Berlin et al. (1973). In their study they used 6 CV/pa, ta, ka, ba, da, ga/ non sense syllable. These stimulus were paired, whose onset were 0, 15, 30, 60, 90 msec apart. 12 adult female served as subject. Results revealed REA when the syllable were given simultaneously. The leading syllable intelligibility dropped when leading by 15 and 30 msec and the intelligibility of lag ear improved. Intelligibility of both lag and lead ear improved beyond 30 msec. Binger & Raffin (1986) investigated identification of the dichotic CV at onset time asynchronies of 120, 30, 60, 90 msec for 6 CV paired randomly. Results showed significant REA at 0 msec, however the study did not support the presence of lag effect.
Porter (1975) In a dichotic task, where signals were presented with onset asynchronies varying from 0 to 150 msec.Subjects identified the lagging signal
more accurately and reported them as clearer than the leading signal at 30 and 70 msec delay between two ears. Beyond 70 msec lag no difference was found. Rajgopal (1996); Puronile (2000) found an improvement in score from 0 to 90 msec lag. Lag effect was also seen in children between age range of 8-17 years (Ganguly, 1996). Gelfand, Hollman, Walkmen & Pipes (1980) found aberration of lag effect for CV in elder subject.
Darmin (1971), Porter (1978) studies have demonstrated that REA and lag effect are independent of one another and there is evidence that lag effect might be a case of temporal masking not limited to speech stimuli.
2) Phonetic Effects Phonetic effect or stimulus dominance is a phenomenon where in higher scores are got one of the 2 competing syllable, the dominant one regardless of the ear to which it is presented. This effect is seen in natural CV syllables (Roeser, Johns, & Price, 1992). In some respects, stimulus dominance is a more interesting phenomenon in dichotic listening, than the ear advantage. It occurs with greater frequency and magnitude than the ear advantage.
(a) Voiced versus Voiceless consonants
Berlin et al. (1973) reported that scores were higher for voiceless stops [pa], [ta], [ka] than for voiced stops /ba/, /da/, /ga/ in pairs of natural syllables contrasting in voicing. The voiceless stops are said to be dominant than the voiced stops. The findings were supported by Roser, John & Price (1972) Wiceum, Risburn & Speaks (1981).
A few authors here studied different parameter
which determines the voicing character of a sound, Repp (1976) studied the effect of variation in voice onset time (VOT) on the perception of dichotic CV syllables contrasting in voicing features. Variation in VOT had a systematic effect on the probability of hearing the fused stimuli as voiced or voiceless sounds, changing the VOT of the voiceless stimuli had a larger effect than changing the VOT of a voiced stimulus. Porter & Berlin (1976); Rajagopal Ganguly & Yathiraj (1996) reported that regardless of ear of presentation, the voiceless syllables are reported correctly when compared to the voiced syllables.
Mannah (1971) found slightly different results.
In her study it was found that unvoiced consonants were more intelligible than the voiced, but it was not always true. She reported more intelligible identification of voiced items over unvoiced when either VOT or bounding alignment more simultaneous and onset trailed.
(b) Place of articulation cues Another way to describe the pattern of stimulus is to focus on the place features. Porter, Troendle & Berlin (1976) used 6 CV/pa, ta, ka, ba, da, ga/ paired randomly. Results revealed that velars were more often reported correctly than alveolars, which in turn are reported more correctly than labials (i.e. velar >alveolar>labials). Similarly results by Berlin et al. (1973) found that velars were reported more correctly followed by the bilabial and the apical with less correctness (i.e. Velars > Bilabials > alveolars). Speaks et al. (1988) used 8 pairs in which velar competed with non velar (bilabials and alveolar).
Results: For 6 of these pairs velars dominated the non velar. Rajgopal et al. (1996) found similar results in this study where velars were best perceived followed by labials and alveolar. These studies are in consensus with earlier studies saying velar are more correctly identified than other. Speaks, Carney, Nicoum, & Johnson (1981) presented dichotically CVs /pa, ta, ka, ba, da, ga/ in 24 right handed listeners. They found that /pa/ & /ta/ dominated /ba/ & /da/ /ka/ dominated /ta/, /ba/, /da/ & /ga/ /ga/ dominated /pa/, /ba/ & /da/ /ba/ & /da/ failed to dominate
(C) Vowels and Consonant Most of the studies show little or no REA for vowel (Shenkwniler & Studdert Kennedy, 1967; Darwin 1969, Studdert Kennedy & Shank Weiler, 1970) revealed REA for vowels in a consonant context which was interpreted to mean that vowels surrounded by transition or acoustic correction of vocal tract adjustments towards a given target will have a REA, Berlin et al. (1973) suggested that the REA in speech like task may be related to the use of any acoustic event which is perceptually linkable to a rapid gliding motion of the vocal tract, as in a transition.
Even in vowel some are better perceived than the others, Weise & Home (1973) they dichotically presented 10 vowels (American) in CVC syllable
where the consonant was kept constant and vowels were varied. The vowels were classified into long vowel and short vowel. Results showed that REA better for long vowels compared to short vowels. In long vowels /a, ae/ were perceived better than /e. 0/ which in turn were perceived better than /i, u/. In short vowels /E/ were perceived better than /I, U/.
Studies have been done on different positions of the consonants. Shewen, Natheneon Sent (1968) reported equal REA for initial and final consonant in natural CVC syllables. In contrast to this study, Darwin (1969) reported stronger REA for final consonants position when presented dichotically.
Studdert-Kennedy & Shankweiler (1970) also reported strong REA to final consonant in natural speech stops. Possible explanation for the stimulus dominance Speaks et al. (1981) Inherent intelligibility (II) Lag effect (LE) Prototype matching hypothesis (PMH) Burst amplitude Speaks et al. (1981) tried to test each of these notion
Inherent intelligibility: It might be assumed that certain syllables are more intelligible than others and that the differential intelligibility would be evident regardless of whether the syllables are presented dichotically or in some other mode. Speak et al. (1981) tested this notion. They presented 6 CV syllables, dichotically in different SNR in 4 listeners. They found that the 2 most intelligible (dominant) syllables dichotically were /ba/ & /da/. However, they were least dominant in dichotic presentation. So binaural intelligibility scores in noise did not explain dichotic stimulus dominance (inherent intelligibility is not a satisfactory explanation).
Lag effect: Another possibility in the lag effect which has been explained by Berlin (1973). They studied the dominance of voiceless over voiced stops in voicing contrast pair of natural syllables. Voiceless stops were found to have longer VOT than voiced stops. Therefore, when competing stops are aligned by
reference to the onset of noise burst, the larger amplitude vocalic position of the voiceless stops is delayed relative to the vocalic position of the voiced stops. Hence, it was reasonable that the later arriving voiceless stops (vocalic position) might interrupt processing of the earlier arriving voiced stops.
Speak et al. (1981) however, had reported findings contrary to the above study. He pointed out that lag effect can accounted for Overall voiceless dominating over voiced
/ka/>/ta/, /ga/>/ba/, /ga/>/da/. This all can be explained with respect to lag effect because all the dominants had a longer VOT. However, lag effect cannot be accounted for /ga/ > /pa/ (voiced dominating voiceless though it has lesser VOT compared to voiced) Failure of dominance of /ba-da/ Dominance of synthetic syllable getting reversed (> indicates the dominance) So lag effect was also not a satisfactory explanatory for stimulus dominance
Proto type Matching Hypothesis Repp (1976) proposed proto type matching hypothesis & Category goodness hypothesis to
explain stimulus dominance. Proto type matching hypothesis: The perceptual system is assumed to determine how well a stimulus match any of the several category proto types (templates). When 2 competing dichotic stimuli enter the system, the stimulus that is close to the proto type will tend to dominate over a stimulus that is far from the proto type.
Category goodness model says that stimuli that are distant from the category boundary are likely to dominate than those lying close to the boundary. This distance from a proto type or a boundary is assumed to be a function of acoustic characteristics of the stimulus. Repp (1976) claimed support from his experiment by systematically manipulating the F2 and VOT of the stimulus. He reported that stimulus dominance can be changed systematically with variation in the VOT
of the coupling stimulus.
However, analysis of results of Speaks et al.
(1981) showed that only 5 of the 15 syllables pairs showing agreement between prediction and observation. Murphy (1970) had also obtained almost identical results of Speaks et al. (1981). Thus, Repps model was not a very satisfactory in explaining this phenomenon of stimulus dominance.
Burst Amplitude Another explanation given was concerned with the relative amplitude of the brief moment of articulatory release. Since the spectral properties of burst of frication constitutes one cue for perceiving the different classes of stops (Halley et al. 1957), burst may also be partly responsible for producing stimulus dominance. The peak intensity of burst as well as its duration is generally greater in voiceless stops than the voiced (Klatt, 1975) because of the greater drop in pressure across the oral occlusion at the movement of release for a voiceless stops.
Speaks et al. (1981) measured peak intensity of initial burst frication of 6 steps /p, t, k, b, d, g/. It was seen that the velar /k, g/ has greatest peak
intensity followed by alveolar and labials. Although difference in burst intensity accounted for the presence of or absence of significant stimulus dominance fairly well, magnitudes of stimulus dominance could not be predicted well. This could explain the reverse pattern observed in one of the pairs where voiced stops were dominant over voiceless.
(3) Effect of Intensity Effect of intensity on dichotic listening has not been studied extensively. It was found in a
study by Roeser, John & Prince (1972) tested 32 normals using Dichotic digit at intensity level of 10, 30, 50, 70 dB SL with respect to SRT. Results revealed fewer correct responses at lower intensity i.e. at 10 dB SL. Also right-left difference did not vary as a function of intensity.
Speaks & Bissonette (1975): They used 6 CV syllables and they presented them in pairs dichotically using 4 intensities levels 80, 70, 60, 50
dB SPL. The experiment was done in 2 phases. In the first phase speech level in the right ear was attenuated in 8 dB steps from each of four reference intensities. In the second phase speech level in the left ear was amplified in 8 dB steps. Results showed that the REA was cancelled by attenuation of signal level in the right ear, but the amount of attenuation to cancel the REA varied with reference intensity (i.e. 22 dB for 80 dB SPL to 5 dB for 50 dB SPL reference intensity).
Reyon (1969) in contrast showed that the right ear advantage was held constant when the left ear signal was 6 dB more intense than the right ear.
Some investigators report that the intensity of the signal does influence the response received. Dobie & Simmons (1971) found that when two speech sounds are presented simultaneously to the 2 ears, the subjects were able to report accurately the input to either ear until the signal amplitude to the unattended ear exceeded that of the attended ear by 15 dB.
Bloch & Hellige (1989) investigated the effect of relative difference in intensity level of the stimuli presented to the 2 ears. The results indicated that identification of stimuli presented to one ear improved when those stimuli were relatively higher in intensity than the stimuli presented to the other
ear. (4) Effect of frequency Sidihs (1980, 1981) presented dichotically pure tone of low frequency and required his right handed subjects to report whether subsequent test tone (3rd tone) was or was not one of the tones. Under these conditions he found no ear advantage. However, when he added higher harmonics of fundamental frequency to each of dichotic tones, left ear advantage was observed. He concluded that the right hemisphere was specialized for the analysis of steady state harmonics information
Divenyl K. Efron (1979) used same paradigm as
above on strongly left ear dominant subjects for pure tones. The results showed that the progressive addition of temporal and spatial information (Using speech token) caused right ward shift of ear dominance. (5) Synthetic versus Natural CV Most of the studies reviewed so far used either natural or synthetic stimulus. House et al. (1970) investigated the difference in result due to synthetic versus natural CVs. They presented same CVs (both natural and synthesized) to some listeners. Their results showed essentially no difference in REA for both synthetic and natural CV.
(6) Effect of signal to noise ratio (SNR) Signal to noise ratio affects perception of dichotic listening. Weiss & House (1973) performed a dichotic competing vowels task at two SNR (0 dB SNR & 10 dB SNR) in 13 subjects. The presentation level was kept at 70 dB SPL. Results revealed that as the SNR becomes poorer, the over all scores reduced and the REA became more pronounced. At favorable SNR ear preference were not apparent.
Cullen et al. (1974) investigated effect of SNR. In his experiment signal was presented at 60 dB SPL and band limiting noise was introduced with
SNR varied from 0 to 30 dB in both channels simultaneously. They found performance decreased with low SNR, but right ear advantage was maintained as long as SNR was varied between two channels with 12 dB SNR difference between channels.
(7) Effect of Bandwidth Berlin & McNeil (1976) reported that the intelligibility of one channel can be decreased when
the information transmitted to the other is increased by reducing frequency band width. Thompson et al. (1974): The dominance of right ear over left ear was observed when there was a high frequency cut off set at 4 kHz followed by an equal ear performance when high frequency cut off was 3 kHz and revealed a poor performance of the right ear when cut off frequency was 2 kHz. The difference was found to be marked between channels when frequency was 1.5 kHz.
(8) Effect of stimulus material used
Several test procedure have been developed to measure dichotic listening. All the dichotic speech tests are aimed at reducing both external and internal redundancy. So that it becomes difficult for the subject to respond. Test material commonly used are:
Dichotic digit test (Kimura, 1961) Dichotic CV test (Berlin, 1972) Synthetic sentence identification (Speak & Jerger, 1965) Dichotic rhyme test (Waxler & Lalwace, 1983) Stagger spondaic word KUNNAMPALLIL (Katz, 1961) GEJO MASLP
Koomer & Carmel (1981) conducted study using dichotic CV and dichotic digit on normal and learning disabled children between age 7-10 years and results revealed that no significant difference in ear advantage between the 2 material. Also, the learning disabled performed significantly lower than the normal group on dichotic digit.
Obrzut, Bolick & Obrzut (1996) supported the hypothesis that perceptual asymmetric can be strongly influenced by the type of stimulus material used and the effect of attentional strategy. In this study 12 academically high performing children mean age of (10.8 years) were administered 4 types of dichotic stimuli (word, dichotic CV and melodies in 3 condition of free recall, directed right and
directed left). While expected right ear advantage for words and CV syllables and the expected left ear advantage for melodies were found under free recall, the directed condition produced varied results depending on the nature of the stimuli.
(9) Effect of stimulus familiarity Nachshon & Carmon (1975) studied the effect of speech lateralization, stimulus familiarity and their interaction on ear superiority. CV syllables 6 consonant (3 familiar) 4 vowels (2 familiar) The test was done in 4 contexts that are FF, FN, NF, NN (F-Familiar, N-Not familiar) e.g. in FN condition familiar stimulus (vowel or consonant) was given to left ear and the non-familiar stimulus was given to right ear.
Results revealed that in FF or NN condition consonant showed REA and the recall of vowel are same for both the ears (as
expected). NF consonant showed stronger right ear superiority and NF vowels showed right ear superiority (due to interaction of familiarity and language effect). This shows strong effect of stimulus familiarity.
SUBJECT RELATED FACTORS

(10) Ear difference or Ear effect Generally, when a speech is presented dichotically to normal listener, higher scores are obtained from the material presented to right ear than to left ear. This is right ear advantage and is believed to reflect dominance of left hemisphere for speech and language perception (Studdert et al. 1970).
Asbornsen (1994) reported that about 90% of the normal right handed population and 60% of left handed population show a right ear advantage. The right ear superiority is seen for both meaningful and non-sense syllables (Stienkwerler et al. 1967) and backward speech (Kimura, 1968). In contrast, a left ear superiority has been reported for some non-speech stimulus such as music, sound effects (Curry, 1967).
(11) Effect of age The variation of age in dichotic listening can be referred as developmental dichotic listening. Ingram (1975) reported that a right ear advantage was indicated on dichotic listening task at the age of early as 3 years. This is suggestive of the left hemisphere dominance to certain extent for speech function by that age. This study supports the findings of Kimura (1961, 67) where she found that the right ear advantage appeared no later than the age of 6 years for speech and language hemisphere dominance.
Some researchers here shown that the magnitude of right ear advantage increases with age becoming more lateralized (Sate, Bekliear & Gelbel, 1975) while other have shown it to be constant through out (Berlin et al. 1973, Kinsborne, 1978). The magnitude of right ear advantage was studied using different stimuli, Bellis (1996) study revealed a greater right ear advantage in children when complex linguistically loaded dichotic stimuli were used than with the use of less complex stimuli. As the child matures, the right ear advantage will decreases, reaching adult values by approximately 11 to 12 years.
Gelfand et al. (1980) reported aberration of lag effect for CV
in elder subjects in dichotic task. The subjects included both young and elderly they participated in dichotic speech perception task at various lag time. Right ear advantage was maintained but there was an aberration of the lag effect in older group. Jerger et al. (1994) investigated the effect of age and gender on dichotic sentence identification (DSI). They analyzed DSI scores on 356 subjects (203 males and 157 females (age 9 to 91 years). The DSI was carried out in 2 modes, free report and directed report. Finding confirmed a progressive longer REA with increasing age. The effect was partially striking in the age group above 80 years.
. The left ear deficit or right ear advantage has been explained as a result of relatively greater decline in right hemisphere function with increasing age (Goldstein & Shilling, 1981). Another possibility is
loss in efficiency of inter hemisphere transfer due to comprise of auditory pathways in the corpus callosum (Hellige, 1993). (12) Effect of Gender Berlin et al. (1978) showed REA in males and females in the age range of 5 to 13 years. A total of 150 right handed children participated in the study. Subjects listened dichotically to 60 pairs of nonsense syllables. No difference between genders was found as a function of age.
Remington et al. (1974) presented non-syllables dichotically and observed a significant REA for males. Jerger et al. (1994) investigated effect of age and gender on dichotic sentence identification (DSI). The results suggested that gender different exist in the effect of age on the left ear deficit. In both ears, it was almost 30% for males and only 10% for female. McCoy et al. (1977) studied the effect of age and sex on dichotic listening Stagger spondaic word (SSW )test results revealed that older individual performance poorer than younger individuals. Males tended to perform significantly poorer than female.
There was no significant difference between young males and females.
(13) Effect of Attention Perceptual advantage in dichotic listening can be biased by attention. Bryelen, Munhell and Allend
(1983) found robust laterality effect in an identification task with focused than with divided attention. Bloch & Hellige (1989) investigated effect on instruction to attend to both ears or to focus attention on one ear. For first task (attend both ears), more CVs were identified form the right ear than from left ear. When subjects were instructed to focus attention only left ear, identification of stimuli improved in that ear.
Hiscock & Beckie (1993) in their experiment with 58 children (7-10 years) instructed them to attend to left ear and REA was over come for dichotic CV
stimulus. In contrast to above studied, several studies done on children indicate that normal right handed children of various age show a right ear advantage for dichotic verbal stimuli even when instructed to attend to left ear. However, most of studies on directed attention indicate that perceptual asymmetries can be influenced by the effect of attention strategy employed.
(13) Practice Effect
The absolute advantage of right ear over left ear did not change significantly with practice. Velar were most often reported correctly than alveolar which in turn were reported more correctly than labials even after practice. Minetts & McCantry (1979) studied the effect of training on Stagger spondaic word (SSW )test. He found an increase in the over all correct response as a result of practice.
(14) Effect of Response mode
There are evidence which suggest that in humans the 2 cerebral hemisphere alter in the degree to which they are involved in processing differ kind of information. The mode is an important factor in establishing preferential processes by one hemisphere over the other. Subject can indicate the perception of the test items by pointing, selecting, repeating or by writing. There are 2 types of response mode, open set and closed set response.
Open set response: Individual can either repeat or can write down the text word Mercils & Atkinson (1965) & Nelson & Cheklin (1970) showed that the oral discrimination score were always higher than
write down scores. Closed set response: the selection has to be made from set of choice; choice can be made either verbally or written. Pointing, Llyod, Reid & Mcmenis (1969) tested normal hearing retarding children and found that both written and oral response were reasonably reliable through there was small but statistically significant difference between the responses obtained between the 2 response mode.
Olsen & Mehkin (1979) reported that the closed set response could be used with disordered population. He also found that closed set responses provide good estimate of word recognition performance. Thus, it suggests that the closed set provide higher scores. Ear advantage was studied by using
different modes of responses. Janke (1973) administered dichotic test of monosyllabic CV in 38 male right handed and 50 male left handed. Different response modes CV verbal, written, pointing were utilized. Result suggests that ear advantage scores were not influenced by response mode. Similar results were found by Krishnan & Yathiraj (2001) 10-11 years children were taken and they performed a dichotic CV test using two response mode (oral and written) and results revealed that REA was not influenced by responsive mode.
Summary: Factors affecting dichotic listening are:
Stimulus related Temporal aspect: When one signal lags another signal in a ear then lagging signal will be perceived better lag effect. Lag of around 30-60 msec is required to over come right ear advantage. Phonetic effect: The voiceless stops are dominant over voiced stops. Velar > alveolar > labials Vowels does not show REA in isolation In consonant context long vowel dominate short vowels Stronger REA for final consonants (however studies also try to contradict this) Burst amplitude may account for stimulus dominance fairly well. SNR: Poorer the SNR more will be the right left difference.
. Bandwidth: Intelligibility of one channel can be decreased while the information transmitted in the other is increased by reducing frequency bandwidth. Stimulus material: Dichotic CV were more difficult compared to other tests. Stimulus familiarity: Strong effect of stimulus familiarity compared to ear advantage
Subject related Ear effect: 90% of the normal right handed population and 60% of
left handed population show a right ear advantage. Effect of age: REA was seen for very young children also. In elderly individual the REA is maintained but there is aberration of lag effect. Effect of gender: Studies report of no gender difference. However, so studies report of males performing poorer than female. Effect of Attention: Most of studies on directed attention indicate that ear advantage can be influenced by the effect of attention strategy employed. Practice effect: Performance improves as the practice increases. Effect of response mode: Closed set task gives better scores compared to open set. Also, most study indicates that there is no difference in scores with different modes (oral, written, pointing etc.).
Applications of Dichotic Listening
Dichotic listening involves the presentation of stimuli to both ears simultaneously, but different information to each ear. Dichotic listening has
various applications in many areas. Also many applications have been delineated in the field of speech and hearing too. Applications Determining the site of lesion based on dichotic tests. Applications of dichotic listening in speech and language disorders. Dichotic tests for evaluation of different central auditory processes.
Other applications:
Hemispheric laterality Maturation and dichotic listening
Conductive hearing loss effects
Kimura (1961) is considered to be responsible for the initial introduction of dichotic tests into the field of central auditory assessment. Depending upon the test itself, the listener maybe required to repeat everything that is heard (binaural integration) or to direct his attention to one ear and repeat what is heard in that ear only (binaural separation).
Dichotic Tests:
Dichotic digit test (DDT) Dichotic consonant vowel test (dichotic CV)
Staggered spondaic word (SSW)

Competing sentence test (CST) Synthetic sentence identification with contra
lateral competing message (SSI-CCM) Dichotic rhyme test (DRT)
Normative data: Here we will discuss how the scores varies with different dichotic tests used, material used and
what are the possible effects of maturation and laterally effects on the scores. The comparison between the western studies and Indian studies is also made. Dichotic digit test cited in Bellis (1996) In the norms provided there was a significant right ear advantage noticed in early ages as shown and the laterality effect decreased as a function of age and children attained adult like scores with age around 10-11 years.
Norms:
age range 7 7.11 years 8 8.11 years 9 9.11 years 10 10.11 years 11 11.11years
R ear L ear 70% 75% 80% 85% 90% 55% 65% 75% 78% 88%
But, Regishia (2003) reported quite opposite
results in children with same age range on a Dichotic digit test (DDT) task in Kannada. There was minimal REA noticed in early years and the laterality effect was not so evident in children
Dichotic CV test:
Moumita (2003) obtained normative data of dichotic CV test on adults age ranged 18-25 years. She also used different lag times in dichotic presentation to both ears. The scores indicated that there was a significant REA at all lag times and scores did improve as lag time was increased. However, there was no laterality difference seen between males and females and both shows essentially REA ruling the hypothesis that there is lack of asymmetry in females.
Norms
Onset lags 0 msec 30 msec Rt 30 msec Lt 90 msec Rt 90 msec Lt Male Female
R ear 92% 93% 91% 94% 93% 92% 93%

L ear 87% 88% 88% 87% 89% 87% 87%
Dichotic CV in children: Ganguly, (1996) found
the following results which indicated a REA in both the age groups but, both the group yielded poorer scores. The poorer scores can be attributed to the fact that the test was recorded on a tape rather than a CD which can have possible additional noise that can deteriorate the quality of CV syllables hence scores.
Group 8 12 years 13 17 years
right (58%) (59%)
left 14.50 (48%) 15.48 (50%)
Competing sentence test (CST) : Normative values in children aged 5-10 years indicated 100% in the strong ear, where as in
weak ear ranges from 0-100%, the scores reported to improve with age and attained adult scores by age 11. These findings suggest a significant effect of maturation on the Competing sentence test (CST) with the ear advantage decreasing as the function of increasing age of the child. There was decrease in laterally effect with increase in age as shown.
Age range 8 8.11 years 9 9.11 years 10 10.11 Years 11 11.11 years 12 years adult
right 82% 90% 90% 90% 90%
left 39% 74% 80% 90% 90%
Competing sentence test in Kannada by Hemalatha (1982) in adults aged 18-25 years revealed that there was a significant REA in
males but there was a lack of ear advantage in females, which indicates that there is lack of asymmetry in females as supported by other studies.
Norms:
gender
right
left
Males Females
96% 95%
89% 94%
Dichotic Rhyme Test(DRT) Bellist (1996) reported no significant effect of age on DRT and scores were 32 60% per ear.
Musiek (1989) reported a score of 30-73% in right and a score of 27-60% in left ear. So based on all the normal scores discussed above it can be concluded that Dichotic Rhyme Test (DRT) and Dichotic consonant vowel test (dichotic CV) DCV are the difficult tests which produces low scores and Dichotic digit test ( DDT )and sentence tests reveals high scores and easy to perform yielding high scores. There was REA seen in all the tests.
Dichotic tests as a site of lesion indicators A) Temporal lobe lesions (TL lesions) Kimura (1961) found impaired digit recognition
in the contra lateral ear in patients with temporal lobe lesions, on a Dichotic digit test( DDT) task. Maazzuchi & Ramid (1978) administered DDT on temporal lobe epileptic subjects. Lesion in right temporal lobe impaired left ear scores and lesion in left temporal lobe diminished overall scores. REA was strengthened with right temporal lobe lesion as its adds to the right ear dominance. In left temporal lesions it interferes with natural dominance effect for verbal stimuli.
Mueller et al. (1987) evaluated head injured patients with
DDT and found both ear scores poorer in subjects with left Temporal lobe lesion and only left ear scores were reduced in right Temporal lobe lesion. So DDT is quiet a sensitive test in detecting cortical lesion. Berlin et al. (1972) used dichotic CV with and without time staggering using nonsense syllables in patients with temporal lobe lesions. Preoperatively ipsilateral ear scores were better than contra lateral. But post operatively there was further reduction in contra lateral scores and ipsi scores were enhanced. This was seen both in right temporal lobe and left temporal lobe lesions. Speaks et al. (1975) found low scores for the ear contra to side of brain lesion in all patients with temporal lobe lesion using dichotic CV test.
B) Inter hemisphere lesions (corpus callosum lesion) Musiek & Pinheiro (1985) reported that lesions of the auditory portion of the corpus callosum results in severe left ear deficits on dichotic speech tasks that require verbal report of the stimuli. Musiek (1985) administered Dichotic rhyme test (DRT) to complete split brain patients. The split brain patients yielded expected poor left ear scores and demonstrated right ear enhancement. The right ear enhancement on DRT may suggest a release from central auditory competition in left hemisphere.
Springer et al. (1975) reported high right ear scores and poor
left ear scores on dichotic CV in split brain patients as callosal pathway is severed and information from the left ear is not transmitted. Baron et al. (1986) performed DDT on patients underwent anterior sectioning of corpus callosum. Better scores for right ear than left pre-op and post op there was little change in scores were noticed. C) Brainstem lesions Jerger & Jerger (1975) revealed poorer scores of the ear contra lateral to lesioned hemisphere on Synthetic sentence identification with contra lateral competing message (SSICCM) but found normal results on SSI-CCM in intra axial and extra axial brainstem lesions. So SSI-CCM is sensitive for cortical lesions.
Jerger & Jerger (1975) compared Staggered spondaic word( SSW )in 10 patients with intra axial lesions. They got 44% poorer scores for contra
lateral ear and 16% poorer scores for ipsi ear to side of lesion. Since intraxial lesions effects only contra lateral pathways so contra ear more effected than ipsi. Jacobson et al. (1983) performed dichotic tests (SSICCM, DCV & SSW) on 20 patients with multiple sclerosis. They concluded that DCV was the sensitive test among all in detecting site of lesion in subjects with multiple sclerosis. Berlin (1975) reported similar findings in patients with MGB lesion.
C)Intracranial lesion:
Subjects(4 adult males with mean age of 40yrs) with intracranial lesion showed poor performance on Dichotic digit test .A significantly poorer performance in the ear contra lateral to the lesioned hemisphere was evident in two subjects (Shivshankar,JISHA,19918,67-71)
Auditory processing in speech language disorders A) Stuttering The persons with stuttering are believed to have
symmetrical hemispheres which lead to the lack of cerebral dominance creating a mistiming of motor impulses to bilateral speech muscles producing dysfluent speech (Travis, 1936). Dichotic listening techniques have been used with normal and persons with stuttering for the purpose of finding a dominant or leading hemisphere and to prove or disprove theory of cerebral dominance. Curry & Gregory (1969) conducted a study to study performance of patients with stuttering on dichotic listening tasks, which were supposed to reflect cerebral dominance. 20 subjects with stuttering and 20 normals evaluated on three tasks. Normals showed significant REA as oppose to other group which showed no significant laterality in favour of left hemisphere.
But Dorman & Porter (1975) reported opposite results and found no significant differences in cerebral speech lateralization between subjects
with stuttering and normals. Bhat (1999) found significant differences between the right ear and left ear scores on dichotic CV test in 20 adult male subjects with stuttering. She also found REA though not significant at 0 msec, 30 msec right lag and 30 msec left lag but a significant LEA at 90 msec lag to right and 90 msec lag to left. She attributed this to the problem in reticular activating system which controls attention.
B) Learning disability(LD) There had been mixed results of various dichotic tests on children with learning disability. Brydan (1970) showed that children with LD wont show typical REA and scores are poorer on a dichotic CV task. Higher LEA was reported in children with LD in a study by Morton & Siegal
(1981). Ganguly, Rajagopal & Yathiraj (1996) reported that on dichotic CV task children with LD performed poorer as compared to normal Sobta (1973) also showed essentially normal REA for 24 children with dyslexia on DDT.
C) Aphasia
Niccum (1981) postulated that dichotic tests are useful in determining whether language recovery is based on transfer function to the right hemisphere in their 14 left hemisphere damaged individuals. They reported a LEA in these individuals. Johnson (1977) found a significant left ear preference for verbal stimuli among their left hemisphere damaged individuals as opposed to expected REA in normal subjects.
Comparative studies
Musiek (1983) did a comparative study that investigated the relative sensitivity of three dichotic speech test (DDT, Competing sentence test( CST), SSW) in the assessment of CANS disorders in 18 subjects with cortical lesions. Results showed that the DDT yielded slightly more abnormal findings for both groups than did either one of the two remaining tests. DDT 13/18 abnormal results, SSW 12/18, CST 9/18.
Olsen (1983) administered DCV, SSW on 50 normal subjects and 67 patients with right TL lesion or left TL lesions. Results indicated a large range of performance in normal subjects for different DCV test material. In comparing DCV and SSW test results of the 14 patients with below normal dichotic CV scores only three had abnormal SSW results before surgery and five after surgery. Clearly the SSW test is not as difficult and is less sensitive to cortical lesions than the DCV. The test must be difficult if it is to be sensitive to lesions of temporal lobe, particularly in the anterior portion of the temporal lobe.
Musiek & Morgan (1981): Results of DDT, CST and SSW on a case of vasculitis. DDT, SSW & CST scores were normal for right ear and impaired for left ear before treatment and scores improved to all tests after improvement. Jerger & Jerger (1978) compared SSW & SSI-CCM in variety of disorders.
Non-auditory CNS lesion 100% on SSI-CCM, but 10% of them showed deficits on SSW. VIIIth nerve lesion: Normal on SSI-CCM but slight deficits on SSW. Brainstem lesion: Normal on SSI-CCM but abnormal on SSW. Temporal lobe disorders: Impaired scores on both tests in left ear and normal on right ear. Aphasics: Impaired right ear scores in both tests.
Collard et al. (1982) reported abnormal results on CST for 72% of their temporal lobectomy candidates. They concluded CST more sensitive than SSW, DDT and DCV.
Other applications: A) Hemispheric laterality
Dichotic tasks are used to assess the laterality aspect of verbal stimuli, non-verbal stimuli ex musical, melodic stimuli etc., A REA is expected in right handed individuals on a verbal dichotic tasks. However, opposite ear advantage or no laterality can be expected in left handed individuals. This has been attributed to the functionally superior contra lateral pathways than ipsilateral pathway (Sidtis, 1981).
B) Maturation and Dichotic listening
Dichotic listening on children suggests that the more linguistically loaded the stimuli presented are the more pronounced the maturational effects are likely to be so the sentence tests are the preferred choice when studying maturational aspects. These dichotic tests can be used to study the maturational process of the brain and auditory pathway.
Berlin, Hughes & Bell (1973) studied performance of
children aged 5 to 13 on test of dichotic, CV nonsense words. The performance improved with age in identification of words which reflects an increase in the brains ability to process two channel stimuli as a function of age. Processing of dichotic speech stimuli requires adequate interhemispheric communication via corpus callosum (CC) as well as integrity of both temporal lobes. Poor left ear performance on dichotic sentence tasks in children may reflect a decreased ability of the CC to transfer complex stimuli from the right hem to left. As with age myelination of CC is complete and left scores approaches as of adults (Musiek, Gallegly & Brain, 1984).
C) Conductive pathology effects: An attempt has been made to see the effects of history of otitis media with effusion (OME) on
auditory processing through various dichotic tests. Klausen et al. (2000) found that children in OME group showed a more pronounced REA than controls. But Keith, Lawleen & Cotton (1985) found no difference between normals and OME group on SSW task. James (2003) found that there were auditory processing problems in children with history of otitis media with effusion later in childhood on a dichotic CV task.

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KUNNAMPALLIL GEJO JOHN BASLP, MASLP AUDIOLOGIST

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Monotic ,a listening situation in which the

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FACTORS AFFECTING DICHOTIC LISTENING

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FACTORS AFFECTING DICHOTIC LISTENING

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Stimulus related factors could be:

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Stimulus Related Factors

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(a) Voiced versus Voiceless consonants

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A few authors here studied different parameter

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Mannah (1971) found slightly different results.

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of the coupling stimulus.

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However, analysis of results of Speaks et al.

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Divenyl K. Efron (1979) used same paradigm as

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(8) Effect of stimulus material used

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SUBJECT RELATED FACTORS

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Gelfand et al. (1980) reported aberration of lag effect for CV

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There was no significant difference between young males and females.

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(13) Practice Effect

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(14) Effect of Response mode

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Summary: Factors affecting dichotic listening are:

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Applications of Dichotic Listening

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Conductive hearing loss effects

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Staggered spondaic word (SSW)

lateral competing message (SSI-CCM) Dichotic rhyme test (DRT)

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