Re: Curious dichotic effect

[Pierre Divenyi <pdivenyi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mitch,

The phenomenon is one that Efron and Yund have investigated and wrote about
for about 10 years, starting in 1976. You find a few of the articles in
JASA  (v59/4, 1976; v62/3, 1977; v66/1, 1979) and many in Brain and
Language (1982 and 1983). In brief, the effect seems to be related to the
difference between the two ears' tonotopic layout. This difference, which
they called "ear dominance" is highly idiosyncratic, though (according to
Judith Lauter's superb overview of the various ear difference phenomena, in
JASA v71/3, 1982) the differences involving "simple stimuli", such as pure
tones, produce a left-ear advantage in more than 50% of the population.

Try to repeat your experiment with frequencies in the 1-2-kHz range: I bet
you will see a larger effect.

Pierre Divenyi


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Pierre Divenyi, Ph.D.      Speech and Hearing Research (151)
                                     V.A. Medical Center, Martinez, CA
94553, USA
Phone: (925) 370-6745
Fax:     (925) 228-5738
E-mail :                       pdivenyi@marva4.ebire.org
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