Dichotic listening to words and digits: Influence of attentional bias in children.

Hemisphere specialization for language was studied in 31 children (mean age 10 years 8 months) submitted to a dichotic listening task (in a word and digit free-recall task and a digit pair forced-attention task). We studied test/re-test reliability in the free-recall task and compared performances between girls and boys. We observed a right ear advantage during test which disapeared during re-test. We discuss the influence of attentional bins during dichotic listening and the role of this test in prediction of hemisphere language dominance.