Attention and the right-ear advantage: What is the connection?

Dichotic listening originally was a means of studying attention. Half a century ago Doreen Kimura parlayed the dichotic method into a noninvasive indicator of lateralized cerebral language representation. The ubiquitous right-ear advantage (REA) for verbal material was accepted as a concomitant of left-sided language lateralization and preferential conduction of right-ear messages to the left hemisphere. As evidence has accumulated over the past 50 years showing the REA to be dynamic and modifiable, the concept of attention has become essential for interpreting the findings. Progress in understanding the role of attention has been manifested as a transition from efforts to document attention effects to efforts to characterize their mechanisms. We summarize the relevant evidence, trace the evolution of explanatory models, and outline contemporary accounts of the role of attention in dichotic listening.

► Dichotic listening was a prominent method for studying attention in the 1950s.
► In 1961 Kimura showed that the method also indicates lateralization of language.
► Many findings dispute listening asymmetry as a fixed property of brain structure.
► Attention again becomes necessary for explaining dichotic listening results.
► We discuss the role of attention in contemporary models of dichotic listening.