According to K. S. Lashley (1951) and U. Neisser (1967), models of speech cognition frequently stress a rhythmic organizing principle, indicating that speech processing is intimately related to the processing of rhythmic patterns. However, in agreement with clinical data, dichotic listening studies establish that while speech stimuli are processed by the left hemisphere, other nonspeech auditory stimuli are processed by the right. Challenging this distinction, the present study shows that nonspeech rhythmic patterns carrying no phonetic information are processed by the same hemisphere as speech. 24 college students with normal hearing listened to 30 dichotic pairs of rhythmic pure-tone patterns. In a counterbalanced, forced-choice recognition task, Ss were able to correctly identify the patterns heard in the right ear significantly more often than the left. Results suggest that since rhythmic patterns are the only nonspeech auditory stimuli to share the processing of the left hemisphere with speech, models involving rhythmic organization in speech cognition are to be encouraged. Since both speech and rhythm require hierarchical organization, it is likely that the left hemisphere is better able to process hierarchically. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)