Test-retest performance for the consonant-vowel dichotic listening test with and without attentional manipulations

The present work aimed to replicate Hugdahl and Hammar's (1997) study on the reliability of dichotic listening under divided or focused attention conditions. With the same consonant-vowel syllable dichotic listening procedure, 16 subjects were tested twice, 2 weeks apart. The design included a condition without attentional instructions (nonforced) and two conditions with the instruction to attend either to the right- or the left-ear input. The results showed a significant correlation coefficient of .82 for the standard nonforced condition, indicating temporal stability for the ear advantages. There were also high correlation coefficients for the focused attention conditions (.77 and .76), although the subjects performed the attentional instructions more accurately in session two.