A series of "auditory Stroop" experiments is described. These demonstrate an effect of stimulus words presented on speed of judgments of speaker gender and, conversely, an influence of speaker gender on judgments of words presented. In an experiment in which responses to speaker gender were semantically related to, but not identical with, stimulus words, the auditory Stroop effect was attenuated but remained in evidence. Potential parallels between this auditory paradigm and the visual Stroop color/word effect are explored, and it is suggested that the Stroop effects in the two modalities operate along broadly similar lines. The search for a common causal mechanism would therefore be justified.

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Groups of chronic and acute schizophrenics, together with controls, were given a story comprehension task where material was presented either binaurally or monaurally. A significant right ear advantage was found in the scores of the acute patients but not in those of chronics or controls. Similarly, acutes, in contrast to all other subjects, demonstrated a binaural performance decrement relative to their preferred ear in the monaural condition. A second experiment showed that acute schizophrenics, in contrast to an earlier finding with chronics, were no better at detecting targets in dichotically presented word lists when the targets occurred in one ear only than when they could occur in either ear. It is suggested that this inability to focus attention on one ear, in the presence of competing stimulation to the other, was responsible for the story comprehension result.