Final answer:
A dichotic listening task is used to assess participants' ability to selectively attend to one ear while ignoring the other and examine their ability to process auditory information in noisy environments.
Step-by-step explanation:
The purpose of a dichotic listening task is to assess participants' ability to selectively attend to one ear while ignoring the other. It is used to examine participants' ability to process auditory information in noisy environments and investigate the effects of background noise on speech perception. In this task, participants are presented with sentences in one ear that they shadowed, while in the other ear they hear a list of random words.