Dichotic lateral asymmetry: the effects of grammatical structure and telephone usage

No confirmation could be obtained that the magnitude of the dichotic REA for speech is affected by whether the stimuli are syntactically structured. Recall-order was controlled in Experiment 1 by cueing one ear immediately after a dichotic stimulus; in Experiment 2 by cueing before a stimulus. The subject's reported ear preference for telephone usage was correlated with his ear difference in the first experiment but not in the second. Perhaps telephone usage causes an attentional bias (for speech) to one or other ear, more often to the right; which is over-ridden by the precued instruction to attend to a particular ear.