Lateral advantages in same-different comparison of two-note, dichotically presented chords to a successively-presented probe

An experiment is reported which examines same-different comparison of dichotically presented, two-tone chords to a probe. A prediction of a fast 'same' response indicative of holistic processing was tested. Stimuli and probes were systematically related by similarity relationships established in a previous experiment. No evidence was found for fast 'same' responding overall or on either ear, but a right ear advantage for the making of difficult 'different' decisions was found for accuracy. It is argued that the concepts of analytic and holistic processing may require some redefinition and a preliminary account is offered in terms of Krueger's [23] noisy operator model.