In an investigation using auditory evoked responses (AERs) to compare strongly left- and strongly right-handed adults in their hemispheric processing of speech materials, it was anticipated that AERs would reflect a bilateralization in the left-handed group of subjects and marked hemispheric differences in the right-handed group. In addition, the study investigated whether AERs discriminated between consonant place of articulation cues along phonetic boundaries or whether such responses distinguished between speech sounds varying in discrete and equal acoustical steps regardless of adult labels for the sounds. Subjects listened to four consonant-vowel syllables varying in place of articulation, two perceived as /dae/ and two as /gae/. Twenty-seven randomly ordered repetitions of each stimulus occurred with varied interstimulus intervals, and AERs were recorded from four scalp areas of each hemisphere while subjects attended to stimuli and pressed one of two computer keys. Results indicated that AERs reliably discriminate subjects on the basis of hand preference and discriminate between consonants from different phonetic categories. However, consonant discrimination was not influenced by hand preference. (MSE)