ABSTRACT
A relatively large sample of individuals (N= 240) ranging from 7 to 70 years were studied with the dichotic listening (DL) technique as a measure of language lateralization. Two questions were asked: (a) Is there a developmental effect for the right-ear advantage (REA) with age? (b) Is there a developmental effect for attentional modulation of the REA? The participants were all right-handed, healthy individuals tested in Sweden and Norway. The stimuli were dichotic presentations of consonant-vowel (CV) syllable pairs. There were 3 different attentional conditions: nonforced (NF) attention, with no specific instructions about focusing of attention; forced-right (FR) attention, with instructions to focus attention on the right-ear stimulus; and forced-left (FL) attention, with instructions to focus attention on the left-ear stimulus. The results showed a R E A in all age groups, except for the 9-year-olds, in the NF condition. In the FR condition, all age groups showed a REA. The youngest age groups did not, however, increase the REA to the same degree as the older age groups, as indicated by the significant age x ear interaction. In the F L condition, all
