What Does the Dominant Eye Dominate? A Brief and Somewhat Contentious Review

We examine a set of implicit and explicit claims about the concept of eye dominance that have been made over the years and note that the new literature on eye dominance does not reflect the old literature from the first half of the last century. We argue that the visual and oculomotor function of the dominant eye--defined by such criteria as asymmetry in acuity, rivalry, or sighting--remains unknown and that the usefulness of the concept for understanding its function is yet to be determined. We suggest that the sighting-dominant eye is the eye used for monocular tasks and has no unique functional role in vision.