Dichotic Word Test (DWT) in Indian English Speaking Children

Abstract

The study was aimed in developing dichotic word test for children speaking English in India and also to investigate the effect of list, gender, age and ear. The developed test consists of two lists of monosyllables with each list having 25 word pairs. These word pairs have equal duration and aligned in such a way that both words were presented dichotically at the same time. The developed test material was administered on five groups of normal hearing children (20 in each group) with the age range of 7 to 12 years. The results revealed significant difference between age and ear. As the age increases, the performance of the children also increased showing greater right ear score followed by left ear score and double correct score which indicates the presence of right ear advantage. However, there was no significant difference between list and gender. Reliability measure showed good test retest reliability for both the list. Thus the present data findings can be used as reference for children with central deficits especially cortical lesions.