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Dichotic Listening

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In the dichotic listening – words test (Hayden and Spellacy 1978) – the participant hears three pairs of one-syllable words (one presented to each ear simultaneously). Each word pair begins with the same consonant (see, e.g., Strauss et al. 2006). The audiotape is played through a cassette recorder and headphones. The stimuli presented to the left ear are recorded on the left channel of the tape and played through the left headphone. The reverse arrangement is used for the right ear. According to Strauss et al. (2006), the earphones should be calibrated to ensure that each is producing approximately 65–70 dB for each ear. It is also recommended that the earphones be reversed halfway through testing, to avoid the possible effect of poor earphone calibration. Discrepancies in hearing between ears would create an advantage for the intact ear, and if hearing differs significantly between ears, the test should not be administered.

There are other versions of the dichotic...

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Correspondence to Melissa Amick .

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Amick, M. (2018). Dichotic Listening. In: Kreutzer, J.S., DeLuca, J., Caplan, B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Clinical Neuropsychology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57111-9_1287

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