What experimental technique involves presenting different stimuli to each ear to study attention?

Dichotic listening is an experimental technique used to study attention and auditory processing, where different auditory stimuli are presented to each ear simultaneously. This method allows researchers to investigate how people filter and attend to specific inputs while ignoring others, mimicking real-world situations where we often need to focus on a single conversation in a noisy environment.

During the task, participants may be asked to listen to a specific message in one ear while ignoring the other message in the opposite ear. Tasks can vary, but they often require participants to repeat or recall information from one ear while demonstrating how much information can be processed from the unattended ear. This technique reveals insights into selective attention, demonstrating how our cognitive systems prioritize certain stimuli over others.

The other options are related concepts but do not specifically involve the method of presenting different stimuli to each ear. Top-down processing refers to the cognitive processes guided by prior knowledge and expectations. Transitional probabilities involve the likelihood of certain events occurring sequentially, often in the context of learning language. The cocktail party effect describes the ability to focus on one conversation among many, but it does not involve a controlled experimental setup like dichotic listening does.