Sex And Laterality

Word Count: 1391

Abstract
    This paper discusses the differences in laterality among males and females. More specifically, it discusses the differences in verbal and visuospatial ability among different sexes. The common hypothesis, which has been proven by various people, is that males are superior to women in visuospatial tasks while women are superior in verbal tasks. This difference among males and females is due to the fact that the male brain is more lateralized than that of a female. The purpose of the experiment explained in this paper was to prove the common hypothesis by testing males and females with a verbal and visuospatial task.

"Laterality refers to the preferential use or superior function of one part of the body…" (Martin, 1998, p.135) Laterality pertains to the idea that certain functions or tasks can be performed better by one side of the body. Specific to this paper, certain parts of the brain are designated to perform only certain tasks. It has been proven that the brain is lateralized, meaning that one hemisphere is dominant for specific functions and the other is dominant for other functions. "The conventional view of hemispheric function is that the left hemisphere is rational, verbal, linear, and analytical whereas the right hemisphere is emotional, spatial, holistic and intuitive." (Martin, 1998, p.140) Though the right brain is more involved in aspects of visuospatiality and the left more involved in language ''…the right hemisphere is capable of undertaking rudimentary or compensatory language processing and the left hemisphere is capable of undertaking some spatial processing."(Martin, 1998, p.140)
The idea of lateralization can be applied to the difference among people in handedness. It has been observed that left-handed people appear to be superior to right- handed people on tests of verbal skills. However, left handers are inferior to right handers on tests of visuospatial tasks. The reason that left-handed people have superior verbal ability is because they have more mass of the left brain able to be devoted to language. Therefore, since there is a large area of the right hemisphere devoted to language little mass is available to visuospatiality, its own specialization. (Springer & Deutch, 1981, p.154) Handedness is one of many ways in which the presence of laterality in the brain can be observed.
Through various studies it has been found that the female brain is less lateralized than the male brain. A great amount of evidence has shown that females are superior to males in tasks, which involve the use of language while males are superior to females in spatial tasks. (Springer & Deutch, 1981, p.121) It is found that the female brain is more symmetrical than the male brain. This means that there is less neural mass in the female brain to devote to specific functions. Males are able to devote a large amount of their left brain to verbal tasks and a large amount of their right brain to visuospatial tasks. However, this means that if one section of the brain is damaged a male may totally lose ability to perform the tasks associated with that part of the brain. But, because the female brain is more symmetrical, damage to a section of the brain may not be inhibited because an identical section may be present on the opposite side of the brain. The left hemisphere of the female brain is still mostly devoted to language but the right hemisphere is not devoted to visuospatial tasks as much as the male brain.
Because of the information discussed above it is hypothesized that the results of this experiment will reveal a difference between males and females. It is expected that the males will perform better on the visuospatial task and the females will perform better on the verbal task.
The tasks used in this experiment are considered pure tasks, meaning that only either visuospatiality or verbal ability was tested. In an impure task both abilities are tested. If the two abiliti

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