Development of Dichotic and Monaural Hearing Abilities in Young Children

Paired spoken words were presented to 80 normal children with range from 3 to 6 years and 5 young, adults in such a way that different words arrived simultaneously at the two ears (dichotic listening) and at the one ear (monaural listening) to observe the development of dichotic and monaural separation abilities. The results demonstrated that in case of dichotic listening, significantly more words were recognized from the right ear than from the left ear. On the other hand, in monaural listening the results were almost identical for each ear. The monaural separation ability is inferior to the dichotic separation ability in all age groups. Dichotic and monaural separation, abilities develop as with ageing. Six-year old children and young adults achieve almost identioal results. In group age 3, gils are superior to boys on both dichotic and monaural separation abilities but there is no difference between boys and girls in the older age groups.