Dichotic Listening is a procedure commonly used for investigating selective attention in the auditory domain. Two messages are presented to both the left and right ears (one message to each ear), normally using a set of headphones. Normally, participants are asked to pay attention to either one, or both (divided attention condition) of the messages and may later be asked about the content of both.

In a selective attention task, the participant may be asked to repeat out-loud the content of the attended message; a process known as shadowing. The results are that people are able to recall the message from one side and not both.

Another example of a dichotic listening experiment is Cutting's (1976) demonstrationCutting, J.E., 1976. Auditory and linguistic processes in speech perception: inferences from six fusions in dichotic listening. Psychological Review 83, pp. 114–140. that listeners could correctly identify syllables when different components of the syllable sound were presented to different ears. The formants of vowel sounds and their relation are crucial in differentiating vowel sounds. Yet even though listeners heard two separate signals (no ear received a 'complete' vowel sound), they could identify the syllable sounds.

References

Attention | Experimental psychology

Écoute dichotique