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Sex differences in cognition: the role of handedness
Petra P Thilers1, Stuart W S MacDonald, Agneta Herlitz
1Karolinska Institutet, NVS, Aging Research Center, Gävlegatan 16, 8tr, S-113 30 Stockholm, Sweden. petra.thilers@ki.se
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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