Ear differences in illiterates

The influence of literacy on direction and magnitude of ear asymmetry was assessed using the dichotic technique with three groups of adult females: illiterates, semiliterates and literates. Subjects were presented pairs of CVCV words which differed either in the initial consonant only, or in at least the first three phones. Their task was to report the word heard at the attended ear. A right ear advantage was observed in all groups; it was of roughly the same magnitude for the dissimilar pairs; for the similar ones, the laterality index was greater in the literates. However, an analysis of individual data showed that this difference was related to differences in performance level. When subgroups of similar performance level were compared, no differences in right ear advantage were found as a function of literacy.