Is there a sex difference in human laterality? II. An exhaustive survey of visual laterality studies from six neuropsychology journals

Abstract

The contents of six neuropsychology journals (98 volumes, 368 issues) were screened to identify visual half-field (VHF) experiments. Of the 516 experiments identified, 42% provided information about sex differences. Sixty-eight experiments yielded a total of 92 sex differences, 23 of which met stringent criteria for sex differences in laterality. Of the 20 sex differences satisfying stringent criteria and lending themselves to interpretation in terms of the differential lateralization hypothesis, 17 supported the hypothesis of greater hemispheric specialization in males than in females. The 17 confirmatory outcomes represent 7.8% of the informative experiments. When less stringent criteria were invoked, 27 outcomes (12.3% of the informative experiments) were found to be consistent with the differential lateralization hypothesis. Six findings were contrary to the hypothesis. The results, which closely resemble results for auditory laterality studies, are compatible with a population-level sex difference that accounts for 1 to 2% of the variance in laterality.

Effects of sex and age on auditory spatial scene analysis

“…These sex-related differences in spatial attention and the effect of sex demonstrated here are possibly of similar origin. It has been proposed that such sex differences could be associated with the stronger brain asymmetry in men, resulting in a more effective use of the right hemisphere, which is specialized for spatial functions (Halpern, 1996;Hausmann and Güntürkün, 1999;Hiscock et al, 1995;McGlone, 1980). This view predicts a sex-specific asymmetry in performance, which was not established by the present analyses.…”

Sex differentiates the role of emotional prosody during word processing

“…For example, multiple findings from studies indicated that women are less lateralised than man fMRI [21], dichotic listening [11] and visual laterality when processing language [11,17]. Because this could studies [12] suggest stronger lateralisation of language explain the temporal advantage of women in our data, all functions to the left hemisphere in males, whereas lansubjects were reinvited to participate in a dichotic listening guage functions in females tend to be organised more experiment. Fifty-five of the 64 ERP participants returned bilaterally.…”

Models of hemispheric specialization in facial emotion perception—a reevaluation.

“…Borod et al, 1983;Killgore & Yurgelun-Todd, 2001). A systematic review on VHF studies by Hiscock et al, (1995) reported that 17 out of 92 relevant outcomes show reduced FCAs in females compared to males. An observation that is in line with other reviews and meta-analyses (e.g.…”