Previous research has shown that monaural simultaneous masking is reduced by contralateral cues which are identical in frequency (and phase locked) to the signal, while backward masking is reduced by cues which provide precise timing information about the signal. This letter summarizes a series of experiments which investigated contralateral cueing effects in forward masking. No cues were found to be effective in reducing forward masking; not even cues effective in reducing backward or simultaneous masking for the same practiced subjects