Dichotic competition of simultaneous tone bursts of different frequency: IV. Correlation with dichotic competition of speech signals

Abstract

Presentation of dichotic chords to thirty subjects showed that 23% were right ear dominant, 40% were left ear dominant and 37% had no marked ear dominance. Presentation of dichotic consonant-vowel (CV) signals to the same subjects showed that 70% were right ear dominant and 30% were left ear dominant. Despite the fact that an ear dominance effect was present for both speech and non-speech sounds there was no significant correlation (either positive or negative) between an individual's performance on the two tasks. The performance of native speakers of tonal languages and of musicians was not significantly different from the experimental group of English speaking subjects. These results suggest that the two ear dominance effects are unrelated.