Frequency, Attention, and Phonetic Characteristics that Influence the Right-Ear Advantage for Speech Perception

dc.contributor.advisorHiscock, Merrill
dc.contributor.committeeMemberFoss, Donald J.
dc.contributor.committeeMemberJansen, Ben H.
dc.creatorMcCulloch, Katie
dc.date.accessioned2012-04-19T13:19:32Z
dc.date.accessioned2012-04-19T13:19:34Z
dc.date.available2012-04-19T13:19:32Z
dc.date.available2012-04-19T13:19:34Z
dc.date.createdDecember 2011
dc.date.issued2011-12
dc.date.updated2012-04-19T13:19:34Z
dc.description.abstractThe right-ear advantage (REA) for linguistic stimuli (Kimura, 1961, 1967) is thought to represent an asymmetry of speech perception favoring the left hemisphere. This study seeks to clarify how the REA is altered by: attention instructions, filtering of stimuli, background noise, and phonetic properties of stimuli, viz., voice onset time (VOT) and place of articulation (POA). Participants heard monosyllabic rhyming words from the Halwes (1990) Fused Dichotic Word Test and were instructed to attend to the left or right ear, or to divide attention equally. Stimuli in Experiment 1 were unfiltered, high-pass filtered, or low-pass filtered, and stimuli in Experiment 2 were presented with no noise, white noise, high-pass filtered noise, or low-pass filtered noise. The initial consonants of each dichotic pair were categorized according to POA (bilabial, alveolar, or velar) and VOT (voiced or unvoiced). Repeated-measures ANOVAs performed on laterality ratios showed statistically significant main effects for attention, background noise, VOT, and POA. Right-ear attention, the absence of background noise, and bilateral bilabial presentation enhanced the right-ear advantage. Furthermore, attention interacted with background noise, POA, and VOT.
dc.description.departmentPsychology, Department of
dc.format.digitalOriginborn digital
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10657/223
dc.language.isoeng
dc.rightsThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).
dc.subjectSpeech laterality
dc.subjectSpeech perception
dc.subjectDichotic listening
dc.titleFrequency, Attention, and Phonetic Characteristics that Influence the Right-Ear Advantage for Speech Perception
dc.type.dcmiText
dc.type.genreThesis
thesis.degree.collegeCollege of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
thesis.degree.departmentPsychology, Department of
thesis.degree.disciplinePsychology
thesis.degree.grantorUniversity of Houston
thesis.degree.levelMasters
thesis.degree.majorClinical
thesis.degree.nameMaster of Arts

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