Re: Gender and Cognitive Style

tsoon (tsoon@mail.usyd.edu.au)
Sat, 21 Nov 1998 16:20:26 +1100

>How do you come at this? I wasn't aware there was any good evidence
>differences in lateralization between men and women that contributed to
>cognitive style. While the brain clearly processes different sorts of
>information in different hemispheres I don't think there is any evidence
>that would allow you to attribute broad cognitive styles to a dominance in
>one or other hemisphere. I would be interested if you have any references
>that support this view.

I've read that left-handed people are less lateralised than right-handed people (i.e. the left and right hemispheres are less specialised in particular faculties so there is an intermingling of functions throughout the brain). Being left-handed myself I've often wondered about how true this is and what implications it has for intellectual ability, specialities, etc. Since men are more likely to be left-handed than women, doesn't that imply that women are less lateralised than men? Is this in any way related to the other thing I've read of, that the IQ distribution of left-handed people is more skewed towards the extremes? (i.e. there are proportionately more low IQ and high IQ left-handed people). Because men are supposed to have a more skewed IQ distribution than women too.

Regards
Jason Soon