Pragmatic-semantic and syntactic factors influencing ear differences in dichotic listening.
In a three-factorial experiment sequences of 3 words were presented dichotically. The sequences consisted of two uninflected nouns denoting a person or a group of persons and 1 verb denoting an interaction. The three factors were Ear, Syntactic Structuredness vs. Unstructuredness and Semantic-Pragmatic Structuredness vs. Unstructuredness. The sequences in the syntactic unstructuredness condition are spoken in staccato form without sentence intonation and the order of the 2 nouns and the verb was at random; in the syntactic structuredness condition the sequences were spoken fluently and with sentence intonation and the order was always N-V-N. Semantic-pragmatic structuredness of the sequences means that one of the two potential actor-object-relations between the two nouns of a sequence was more probable than the other. The results show that it is only the left hemisphere that is responsive to syntactic structuredness, while the two hemispheres seems to be equally responsive to semantic-pragmatic structuredness. But it is possible that the two hemispheres differ in the manner in which they make use of semantic structures: the left hemisphere in a selective manner, appropriate for the solution of a specific task, and the right hemisphere in a more diffuse and global manner.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D007839:Functional Laterality / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D012660:Semantics