Journal

The Japanese journal of neuropsychology

[Vol.16 No.1 contents]
Japanese/English

Full Text of this Article
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ArticleTitle The relationship between attention and ear advantage in dichotic monitoring test
Language J
AuthorList Yuko Tagami*, Yoshitaka Ohigashi*
Affiliation *Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University
Publication Japanese Journal of Neuropsychology: 16 (1), 32-38, 2000
Received Aug 5, 1999
Accepted Oct 20, 1999
Abstract The present study investigated Mondor's theory; that is, right-handed people bias their attention toward right during a dichotic listening task. Attention was manipulated in two types of dichotic monitoring tasks (verbal and non-verbal DMT) by presenting a tone cue to the ear from which the subject was required to match. It was hypothesized that if right-handed subjects bias their attention to the right ear, the performance for the right ear would not be affected by orienting attention to the right, whereas the performance for the left ear would improve by orienting attention to the left, regardless the stimuli used. The right ear performance did not show the benefit of attention in both types of DMT; the left ear performance improved significantly in verbal DMT only. Because the right ear performance did not improve, the rightward bias theory was partially supported. However, because the left ear performance was not affected in non-verbal DMT, it was suggested that some kind of interaction between attention and perceptual asymmetry took place. In addition, because the usual REA changed to LEA during the verbal DMT, the possibility that ipsilateral or contralateral activating processing mechanism could be dynamically changed due to attention was also postulated.
Keywords Rightward bias, Attention, Ear advantage, Dichotic Monitoring Test (DMT), Right-handedness

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