Sex differences in performance and hemispheric organization for a nonverbal auditory task

Musically experienced and inexperienced men and women discriminated among fundamental-frequency contours presented either binaurally (i.e., same contour to both ears) or dichotically (i.e., different contours to each ear). On two separate occasions, males made significantly fewer errors than did females in the binaural condition, but not in the dichotic condition. Subjects with prior musical experience were superior to musically naive subjects in both conditions. The dichotic pitch task produced a left-ear advantage, which was unrelated to gender or musical experience. The results suggest that the male advantage on the binaural task reflects a sex difference in the coordination of the two hemispheres during conjoint processing of the same stimuli rather than a difference in the direction or degree of hemispheric specialization for these stimuli.