Attention effects on distortion-product otoacoustic emissions with contralateral speech stimuli.

This study investigated the effect of selective attention on the distortion-product otoacoustic emission (DPOAE) level through the use of environmentally meaningful, contralateral auditory stimuli. Four different conditions were used for measurement: quiet, contralateral noise, contralateral speech (unattended), and contralateral speech (attended). A statistically significant suppression effect for both the noise and speech conditions was found. However, there was no support for an auditory selective attention effect on the distortion-product amplitude.