Right ear advantage in prospective memory: the retrieval strategy makes the difference
Abstract
We tested for the effect of lateralized attention on prospective memory performance in a dichotic listening task. The ongoing task consisted of a semantic decision task during which the participants were presented with different words on both ears. Participants were required to focus on the words presented on the left or right ear and to make an abstract-concrete decision. The prospective memory task consisted of the detection of animal words which could appear on both sides. Analysing individual cost profiles revealed that a spontaneous retrieval strategy was associated with a right ear advantage in contrast to strategic monitoring. The finding suggests that different retrieval strategies can be differentially affected by the structural organisation of the brain.
