Children's recall strategies in dichotic listening

Normal adults spontaneously adopt different recall strategies in reporting dichotic material presented at different rates. A channel by channel or ear order is used with the faster rate of input and a pair by pair or temporal order is used with the slower rate of input. The purpose of the present report is to study the frequency of the different orders of report in children as a function of the rate of input of dichotic stimulation. Twenty-four normal children, 9–10 years of age, were given the dichotic listening task under three rate conditions. The children used different recall strategies as a function of rate of input in the same manner as that reported for adults. In addition, the order of presentation of the different rates of input was found to influence the relative frequency of the different recall strategies. A significant positive correlation was found between intelligence and the frequency of use of only the temporal recall strategy in its appropriate (slow) rate condition.