Effects on superiority of ear of intonation of dichotically presented sentences.
A dichotic listening paradigm utilizing sentences of three monosyllabic words examined the effects of intonation on superiority of ear. Five types of intoned contours, i.e., declarative, interrogative, imperative, conditional, and monotone, were employed. Subjects consisted of 20 adults who had normal hearing bilaterally, were native English speakers, and were righthanded in 100% of their daily activities. The results indicated that, when three monosyllabic work sentences with four different intoned contours were dichotically presented, superiority of neither left nor right ear was evidenced. However, the declarative intoned contours, being linguistically less marked, were perceived with significantly less accuracy than the relatively more marked interrogative, imperative, and conditional intoned contours.
D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception; D004423:Ear; D007839:Functional Laterality; D006801:Humans; D013060:Speech