Development and Validation of a Persian Version of Dichotic Emotional Word Test.
BACKGROUND
Emotional words in comparison with neutral words have different hemispheric specialization. It is assumed that the right hemisphere has a role in processing every kind of emotional word. The objective of the present study was the development of a Persian version of the dichotic emotional word test and evaluate its validation among adult Persian speakers.


METHODS
The present study was done on 60 adults, with the age ranging from 18-30 years for both genders, who had no history of neurological disorders with normal hearing. The developed test included eight main lists; each had several dichotic emotional/ neutral pairs of words. Participants were asked to recall as many words in each list as they could after they listened to them. A content validity index was used to analyze the validity of the test.


RESULTS
The mean content validity index score was 0.94. The findings showed that in the left ear, emotional words were remembered more than neutral ones (P=0.007). While in the right ear, neutral words were remembered more (P=0.009). There were no significant differences in male and female scores.


CONCLUSIONS
Dichotic emotional word test has a high content validity. The ability to remember emotional words better in the left ear supports the dominant role of the right hemisphere in emotional word perception.
Department of Audiology, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Atefe
A
Davudzade
Department of Audiology, School of Rehabilitation Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Abdolreza
A
Shaibanizadeh
Rehabilitation Research Center, School of Rehabilitation Sciences , Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Zahra
Z
Jafari
Department of Linguistics, Linguistics Faculty, Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies, Tehran, Iran.
Farzin
F
Fahimnia
Department of Biostatistics, School of Management and Medical Information Science, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
Masoud
M
Haghani
Cerebral Dominance; Dichotic Listening Test; Emotional Aspects; Right Hemisphere