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Does attentional cueing affect dichotic listening performance in children?
John E Obrzut1, Carol A Boliek, Arve Asbjornsen
1Department of Special Education, Rehabilitation, and School Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. jobrzut@u.arizona.edu
Developmental Neuropsychology
|November 7, 2006
Summary
Children with learning disabilities (LDs) use tonal cues better than verbal cues to focus attention in dichotic listening tasks. Control children, however, perform better with verbal cues, showing developmental differences in attention shifting.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Auditory Processing
Background:
- Dichotic listening (DL) performance in children can be influenced by attention.
- Previous research shows inconsistent effects of attention on ear asymmetries in children, possibly due to developmental differences in cue utilization.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the effects of verbal versus nonverbal (tonal) attention cues on dichotic listening performance in children with and without learning disabilities (LDs).
- To explore developmental differences in how children with and without LDs use verbal and tonal cues to direct attention.
Main Methods:
- 30 right-handed children (15 control, 15 with LDs, mean age 10.8 years) participated.
- Participants completed dichotic listening tasks using monaural tone cues, binaural verbal cues, and monaural verbal cues.
- A factorial analysis of variance was used to analyze performance on ear scores across different cueing conditions.
Main Results:
- A significant right-ear advantage was observed in both groups.
- A significant Group x Task interaction indicated that cue condition affected ear score performance differently for each group.
- Control children showed greater attention shifts with verbal cues, while children with LDs showed greater attention shifts with tonal cues.
Conclusions:
- Control children demonstrate a stronger ability to focus attention using verbal cues.
- Children with LDs exhibit a greater ability to orient attention using tonal cues, which effectively reduces error rates in dichotic listening tasks.
- Findings suggest distinct developmental pathways in attentional cue utilization for children with and without learning disabilities.
