An EaRitating Task

Science Fair Abstract

An “Earitating” Task

Which ear is more dominant? If one ear is listening to one conversation, and the other is listening to a different conversation, do we consistently pay more attention to information going into one ear over the other? The goal of this experiment was to examine whether one ear is more dominant than the other. Previous studies have shown that the left hemisphere of the brain is important in processing verbal information. Furthermore, the left hemisphere generally controls functions of the right side of the body. Therefore, if different information travels through the right and left ear, then information going through the right ear may be processed more quickly. Using a dichotic listening task, participants were given a recording where different words were presented to the left and right ears. Participants were expected to note down the words they heard. These words may be those played to the left ear, the right ear, and if the participants were able to, they were instructed to write down the two different words presented to both ears. The independent variable was the presentation of different words to the right and left ear. The dependent variable was the the ability to correctly state the words that have been presented. Results of this study show that there is no significant difference in the performance between the left and right ear, suggesting that there is no indication of dominance between the ears. However, due to the limitations of this study, different and longer words lists, as well as more participants, are highly encouraged for future experiments that study dichotic listening.