In cognitive psychology, dichotic listening is a procedure commonly used to investigate selective attention in the auditory system. In dichotic listening, two different auditory stimuli (usually speech) are presented to the participant simultaneously, one to each ear, normally using a set of headphones. Participants are asked to attend to one or (in a divided-attention experiment) both of the messages. They may later be asked about the content of either message….

Page 1 of the Weekend Australian (12-13 Nov ’11) had leads from the paper’s foreign editor, Greg Sheridan, and political editor, Denis Shanahan. The messages were mixed and perhaps even ‘dichotic’:

“There will be no military bases (US) in Australia”: Greg Sheridan, 1st paragraph of p1

“Mr Obama and Julia Gillard will announce a new joint US-Australia military base in Darwin”: Denis Shanahan, p1

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