Earedness (ear choice in monaural tasks): its measurement and relationship to other lateral preferences

A total of 373 normal young adult subjects were distributed among 5 experiments measuring earedness. Handedness, eyedness and familial L-handedness were also indexed. Special care was taken to remove environmental asymmetries when determining ear preference when listening to sound from a suspended earphone, and from a stopwatch on a table, and for using a telephone symmetrically constructed and displayed. Ear preference was strongly influenced by seemingly minor environmental asymmetries and did not influence telephone habits, and must be considered a very weak lateral preference. Earedness was as concordant with handedness as eyedness was found to be; earedness was concordant with handedness in 74% of dextrals and 65% of sinistrals, but earedness was not related to eyedness. Earedness did not vary with putatively hemisphere-specific stimulus types (music, speech). Laterality of telephone use was jointly determined by handedness and the expectation of writing, not by earedness.