Handedness and sex differences in intelligence: Evidence from the Medical College admission test

Abstract

Our analysis of Medical College Admission Test subtest scores by writing hand preference and sex suggests that (a) right hemispheric dominance is associated with intellectual giftedness in verbal reasoning (left-handers obtained higher scores on the verbal reasoning test and were overrepresented in the upper tail of the distribution), (b) different patterns of brain lateralization are associated with different subcomponents of cognition (right-handers scored higher, on average, on the writing test and were overrepresented in the upper tail of the distribution), and (c) men generally score higher than women on tests of scientific knowledge (the most striking differences between men and women were on the biological and physical science tests).