Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Sydney, Lidcombe, Australia.
Laterality. 2010 May;15(3):343-60. doi: 10.1080/13576500902799671. Epub 2009 Apr 2.
The perception of voice-onset time (VOT) during dichotic listening provides unique insight regarding auditory discrimination processes and, as such, an opportunity to learn more about individual differences in reading ability. We analysed the responses elicited by four VOT conditions: short-long pairs (SL), where a syllable with a short VOT was presented to the left ear and a syllable with a long VOT was presented to the right ear, as well as long-short (LS), short-short (SS), and long-long (LL) pairs. Stimuli were presented in three attention conditions, where participants were instructed to attend to either the left or right ear, or received no instruction. By around 9.5 years of age children perform similarly to adults in terms of the size and relative magnitude of the right ear advantage (REA) elicited by each of the four VOT conditions. Overall, SL pairs elicited the largest REA and LS pairs elicited a left ear advantage (LEA), reflecting stimulus-driven bottom-up processes. However, children were less able to modulate their responses according to attention condition, reflecting a lack of top-down control. Effective direction of attention to one ear or the other was related to measures of reading accuracy and comprehension, indicating that reading skill is associated with top-down control of bottom-up perceptual processes.
在双耳分听任务中感知语音起始时间（VOT）可以深入了解听觉辨别过程，从而有机会更多地了解阅读能力的个体差异。我们分析了四种 VOT 条件下的反应：短-长对（SL），其中短 VOT 的音节呈现于左耳，长 VOT 的音节呈现于右耳，以及长-短（LS）、短-短（SS）和长-长（LL）对。刺激在三种注意条件下呈现，要求参与者注意左耳或右耳，或者不给予任何指令。大约在 9.5 岁时，儿童在四种 VOT 条件下产生的右耳优势（REA）的大小和相对幅度方面与成人表现相似。总体而言，SL 对产生的最大 REA，LS 对产生左耳优势（LEA），反映了刺激驱动的自下而上的过程。然而，儿童根据注意条件调节反应的能力较差，反映出缺乏自上而下的控制。有效地将注意力指向一只耳朵或另一只耳朵与阅读准确性和理解的测量结果相关，表明阅读技能与自下而上的感知过程的自上而下控制相关。
