Stimulus competition and ear differences in memory for sentences.

Recognition memory was compared within subjects for meaningful sentences presented either non-competitively (monaural condition) or accompanied by non-verbal (monaural-noise condition) or verbal (dichotic condition) input. A right-ear advantage for sentence memory occurred with dichotic but not with monaural presentation. Error analyses showed evidence of qualitative differences in processing under competitive and non-competitive conditions. These results suggest that different types of linguistic processing may be involved in investigations of auditory asymmetries which employ monaural and dichotic presentation.