Sex differences in cognition: the role of testosterone and sexual orientation

The performance of both heterosexual and homosexual males and females was compared on four cognitive tasks which have been shown to reveal evidence of sexual dimorphism. In one spatial and one verbal task, significant sex and orientation effects were found. Significant relationships were also found between salivary free-testosterone levels and performance on both spatial tasks, but no significant associations were found for performance on the two verbal tasks. The present study revealed both within- and between-sex differences in cognition and indicates that these differences may be partly accounted for by the activational effects of free testosterone.