Development and Validation of a Persian Version of Dichotic Emotional Word Test

Introduction: emotional words in comparison with neutral words have different hemispheric specialization. it is assumed that the right hemisphere has a role in processing every kind of emotional word. the objective of the present study was the development of a persian version of the dichotic emotional word test and evaluate its validation among adult persian speakers. materials and methods: the present study was done on 60 adults, with the age ranging from 18-30 years for both genders, who had no history of neurological disorders with normal hearing. the developed test included eight main lists; each had several dichotic emotional/ neutral pairs of words. participants were asked to recall as many words in each list as they could after they listened to them. a content validity index was used to analyze the validity of the test. results: the mean content validity index score was 0.94. the findings showed that in the left ear, emotional words were remembered more than neutral ones (p=0.007). while in the right ear, neutral words were remembered more (p=0.009). there were no significant differences in male and female scores. conclusion: dichotic emotional word test has a high content validity. the ability to remember emotional words better in the left ear supports the dominant role of the right hemisphere in emotional word perception.