Is there a sex difference in human laterality? I. an exhaustive survey of auditory laterality studies from six neuropsychology journals

Abstract

The entire contents of six neuropsychology journals (98 volumes, 368 issues) were screened to identify auditory laterality experiments. Of the 352 dichotic and monaural listening experiments identified, 40% provided information about sex differences. Among the 49 experiments that yielded at least one significant effect or interaction involving the sex factor, 11 outcomes met stringent criteria for sex differences in laterality. Of those 11 positive outcomes, 9 supported the hypothesis of greater hemispheric specialization in males than in females. The 9 confirmatory outcomes represent 6.4% of the informative experiments. When less stringent criteria were invoked, 21 outcomes (14.9% of the informative experiments) were found to be consistent with the differential lateralization hypothesis. The overall pattern of results is compatible with a weak population-level sex difference in hemispheric specialization.

Dichotic listening asymmetry: Sex differences and menstrual cycle effects

“…Sex differences have been reported in the dichotic listening literature. However, these findings are not consistent across studies (Hiscock, Inch, Jacek, Hiscock-Kalil, & Kalil, 1994). Some studies have shown larger asymmetry in men than women (Cowell & Hugdahl, 2000;Weekes, Zaidel, & Zaidel, 1995) while others have not (Demarest & Demarest, 1981;Foundas, Corey, Hurley, & Heilman, 2006;Hiscock & MacKay, 1985).…”

“…Sex differences in dichotic listening, with males having a greater REA than women, have been reported in some (Cowell & Hugdahl, 2000;Weekes et al, 1995) but not all studies (Foundas et al, 2006;Hiscock et al, 1994). In the current study a significant sex difference in laterality was found only when men were compared to women at the Low-EP phase.…”

Sex differentiates the role of emotional prosody during word processing

“…This advantage might arise from differences in the processing as well as the organisation of Meta-analyses, summarising several dichotic listening language in the brain. 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.…”

Hormones and dichotic listening: Evidence from the study of menstrual cycle effects

“…The right ear advantage (REA) observed in healthy, right-handed adults has been shown in some studies to be greater in men compared to women (Cowell & Hugdahl, 2000;Wadnerkar, Whiteside, & Cowell, 2008). However, this is a controversial finding which has not always been replicated (Foundas, Corey, Hurley, & Heilman, 2006;Hiscock, Inch, Jacek, Hiscock-Kalil, & Kalil, 1994). Voyer's (1996) meta-analysis showed significant yet small estimated effect sizes for male-greater-thanfemale asymmetry contrasts derived from verbal dichotic listening tests.…”