Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
2845968 Physiology & Behavior 2007 5 Pages PDF
Abstract

Women typically outperform men on episodic memory and verbal fluency tasks, whereas men tend to excel on visuospatial tasks. As the vast majority of individuals are right-handed (RH), sex differences in the cognitive literature reflect laterality-specific patterns for RH individuals. We examined the magnitude of cognitive sex differences as a function of hand dominance in samples of RH and non-RH individuals. Results showed the expected sex differences in the RH group, whereas these differences were unreliable in the non-RH group. These results are discussed in terms of earlier findings of a more bilateral representation of language functions in non-RH men, possibly affecting their visuospatial performance negatively and their verbal performance positively, thereby reducing cognitive sex differences.

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