Sex differences in cognitive impairment following unilateral brain damage

Abstract

Studies reporting that cognitive activity in women is more bilaterally organized than in men are reviewed. WAIS data from left- and right-sided male and female brain-injured patients are presented. A significant discrepancy score is found between the VIQ and PIQ in the male subsample, but not in the female subsample. The latter is almost equally impaired on the two scales irrespective of side of damage. The clinical usefulness of the discrepancy score is modest, classifying laterality of lesion correctly in less than 70% of patients of either sex. Linear discriminant analysis of the subtests disregarding the verbal-performance dichotomy yielded considerable increase in hit-rate in prediction of laterality of lesion. It is concluded that men and women use different cognitive strategies in solving intellectual problems and that this may explain the sex differences found on the WAIS.