Monaural ear advantages in simple and choice reaction time: artifacts and individual differences

Previous studies are said to show that there are ear advantages, usually right-sided, for simple RT to monaural tones. It has been disputed whether these ear advantages are the same for choice RT. Latencies for each hand were measured using a bimanual response and no ear advantages were found for either simple or choice RT. Ipsilateral responses were not faster than contralateral responses. However, subjects show significant differences in ear advantage from each other. It is suggested that all ear advantages for monaural tones in RT studies result from lateral biases and compatability effects.