Auditory extinction to nonverbal and verbal stimuli

Abstract

The so-called auditory extinction phenomenon in a verbal dichotic listening test was investigated in seven brain damaged patients from the qualitative standpoint. As the result, it became evident that the phenomenon could result from competition between verbal materials presented to both ears in at least two different levels of auditory processing i.e., sound perception and linguistic recognition. From the present study, we emphasize the following: If Bender's definition is followed, it is advisable to use the term extinction only for the phenomenon at the acoustic level. If the use of the term extinction for the phenomenon is to be continued at the linguistic level, the presence of auditory extinction and/or obscuration to nonverbal stimuli should be noted.