Programs to produce high quality dichotic tapes for central auditory testing.

Area of Science:

• Auditory Neuroscience
• Neuroscience
• Computer Science

Background:

• Dichotic stimulation is crucial for assessing speech lateralization and central auditory function.
• Current reliance on commercial dichotic tapes is limited by availability and potential stimulus errors.
• A need exists for precise, customizable dichotic stimulus generation in research and clinical settings.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present a general set of computer programs for generating dichotic stimulation sequences.
• To enable researchers to create custom dichotic tapes with high precision.
• To address limitations and errors associated with existing commercial dichotic tapes.

Main Methods:

• Development of a two-stage program set for the PDP 11 computer series.
• Stage 1: Generation of user-specified, constrained random ordering of stimuli.
• Stage 2: Creation of audio tapes with precisely timed and sequenced dichotic stimuli, potentially using waveform editing packages.

Main Results:

• The programs allow for the generation of any desired sequence of dichotic stimuli.
• High precision in stimulus output is achieved, overcoming limitations of commercial tapes.
• Researchers can produce custom dichotic stimulation tapes tailored to specific research needs.

Conclusions:

• The developed computer programs provide a flexible and precise tool for generating dichotic stimulation.
• This facilitates accurate auditory testing and research by enabling custom stimulus creation.
• The system offers a solution to the problem of stimulus errors in commercially available dichotic tapes.