A left-ear disadvantage for the presentation of irrelevant sound: manipulations of task requirements and changing state.
Three experiments attempted to clarify the effect of altering the spatial presentation of irrelevant auditory information. Previous research using serial recall tasks demonstrated a left-ear disadvantage for the presentation of irrelevant sounds (). Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effects of manipulating the location of irrelevant sound on either a mental arithmetic task () or a missing-item task (; Experiment 4). Experiment 3 altered the amount of change in the irrelevant stream to assess how this affected the level of interference elicited. Two prerequisites appear necessary to produce the left-ear disadvantage; the presence of ordered structural changes in the irrelevant sound and the requirement for serial order processing of the attended information. The existence of a left-ear disadvantage highlights the role of the right hemisphere in the obligatory processing of auditory information.
Department of Psychology, University of Wolverhampton, 243 Willenhall Road, WV1 2HY Wolverhampton, UK. l.hadlington2@btinternet.com
Lee J
LJ
Hadlington
Andrew M
AM
Bridges
C Philip
CP
Beaman
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001307:Auditory Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D004423:Ear / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006311:Hearing Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008433:Mathematics; D008875:Middle Aged; D013017:Sound Localization / Q000502:physiology