INDIVIDUAL VARIATION IN HEMISPHERIC-ASYMMETRY - MULTITASK STUDY OF EFFECTS RELATED TO HANDEDNESS AND SEX

Functional hemispheric asymmetries were examined for right- or left-ha nded men and women. Tasks involved (a) auditory processing of verbal m aterial, (b) processing of emotions shown on faces, (c) processing of visual categorical and coordinate spatial relations, and (d) visual pr ocessing of verbal material. Similar performance asymmetries were foun d for the right-handed and left-handed groups, but the average asymmet ries tended to be smaller for the left-handed group. For the most part , measures of performance asymmetry obtained from the different tasks did not correlate with each other, suggesting that individual subjects cannot be simply characterized as strongly or weakly lateralized. How ever, ear differences obtained in Task 1 did correlate significantly w ith certain visual field differences obtained in Task 4, suggesting th at both tasks are sensitive to hemispheric asymmetry in similar phonet ic or language-related processes.