Comparison of English and French versions of a dichotic auditory perception test (SSW) on normal bilingual subjects

Young adult, normal-hearing, Canadian-French Ss (5 M, 5 F) from Montreal were matched for sex, age, and education with 10 Canadian-English Ss. Each S self-rated his receptive and expressive abilities in his non-native language. Then, all were given a new French and a standard English version of the SSW test. After controlling for second-language ability as a covariate, ANOVA showed performance significantly worse in the second language and in the dichotic condition. French Ss performed better on the non-dichotic condition of the English SSW than did English Ss on the French version. This study suggests that the new Canadian-French version of the SSW test is comparable in difficulty to the original English EC tape, but cautions against clinical use of SSW tasks with second-language Ss.