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Cognitive sex differences and hemispheric asymmetry: A critical review of 40 years of research

Hirnstein, M.; Hugdahl, K.; Hausmann, M.

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Authors

M. Hirnstein

K. Hugdahl



Abstract

According to a longstanding view, sex differences in cognitive abilities such as mental rotation or verbal memory arise from sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry: males are thought to be more lateralized than females which boosts their spatial but hampers their verbal skills. This idea sparked great interest and, even though it lost support in the 1990s, it is still put forward in contemporary (popular) scientific papers and textbooks. We aimed to provide a comprehensive review that summarizes the last 40 years of research. First, we confirm previous findings that the stronger hemispheric asymmetry in males is very small but robust. Second, we conclude that stronger hemispheric asymmetry, in general, does not enhance spatial and reduce verbal performance. Crucially, we carried out a systematic literature review showing that cognitive sex differences often emerge in the absence of sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry (and vice versa), implying the two phenomena are at least partly independent of each other. At present, there is insufficient data to conclude that sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry and cognitive performance are uncorrelated. However, we can conclude that sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry are certainly not the driving force behind sex differences in cognitive functioning.

Citation

Hirnstein, M., Hugdahl, K., & Hausmann, M. (2019). Cognitive sex differences and hemispheric asymmetry: A critical review of 40 years of research. Laterality, 24(2), 204-252. https://doi.org/10.1080/1357650x.2018.1497044

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 29, 2018
Online Publication Date Jul 9, 2018
Publication Date Jan 31, 2019
Deposit Date Jul 17, 2018
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal Laterality
Print ISSN 1357-650X
Electronic ISSN 1464-0678
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 24
Issue 2
Pages 204-252
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/1357650x.2018.1497044

Files

Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (1.6 Mb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution,
and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.






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