The comparison of auditory capacity between bilinguals and monolinguals by consonant - vowel dichotic test

Exposure to two languages would lead to further development of auditory system. Studies show a relationship between anatomical and functional changes in the bilingual scerebral cortex and learning a second language. The purpose of this study was to investigate the amount of auditory capacity of bilinguals compared to monolinguals using the consonant - vowel dichotic test. 80 normal individuals, age ranged between 18 to 35 years, were divided in to two groups of monolingual and bilingual (19 people with Turkish language and 21 people with Kurdish language were in the bilingual group). Consonant - vowel dichotic test was utilized to investigate the auditory capacity of individuals. The results indicated that the auditory capacity was greater in bilingual group. In general, higher scores were gained by bilinguals in both ears compared with monolinguals (p< 0/001). Comparison between the three language groups (monolingual, bilingual Kurdish and bilingual Turkish) showed that monolinguals had tangible differences compared to both bilingual Kurdish and Turkish (p<0/001); whereas, there were no significant differences between bilingual Kurdish and Turkish group (p=0/871). Since the results of the current study suggest higher auditory capacity in bilinguals, further research would be conducted on the effect of learning the second language on auditory processing of monolinguals.