Dichotic listening: evolution, limitations and application in sports (Original)

Abstract

Sport draws on advances in neuroscience and the results of test applications for research purposes. Dichotic listening is considered one of the most used auditory-cognitive tests in neuropsychological studies. A typical dichotic listening test consists of the simultaneous presentation of two different acoustic stimuli through headphones, presenting one of the stimuli to the left ear and the other to the right, where the participants report information about the stimulus they hear in each trial. This article aims to expose the advances and limitations of studies that use dichotic listening as an evaluative method, and its application in sports, through the use of the historical-logical method in the analysis of 40 updated medical/psychological bibliographical sources obtained from digital repositories. It was found that the field of application of the dichotic listening paradigm covers several areas of neuroscience, such as clinical neurology, neuropsychiatry and neuropsychology. There are several variants of the dichotic listening test according to the stimulus modality (verbal or auditory) and the instruction: with digits, monosyllabic words, two-syllable words, three-syllable words and phrases, with forced or unforced attention. The main limitations of these instruments lie in their doubtful validity and reliability, associating their success with the properties of the stimuli to which the patients are subjected and the instructions given; in addition to the meager scope of this paradigm in other areas of science applied to sport, and especially Sport Psychology.