| Abstract: | Previous developmental studies have indicated that boys tend to perform better than girls on tasks associated with the right hemisphere (e.g., spatial tasks), whereas girls perform better on tasks associated with the left hemisphere (e.g., verbal tasks). Extending this body of literature to what is known about hemispheric specialization of visuospatial processing, we predicted that boys would be more global than girls in their perception of visual hierarchical stimuli. Forty girls and 39 boys between the ages of 4 and 12 years were administered a perceptual judgment task previously used by Kimchi and Palmer (see record 1983-02534-001). Boys were significantly more global in their perceptual judgments than girls at all ages. Younger children of both sexes were less global than older children. Results were consistent with developmental models that suggest an early left-hemisphere advantage for girls and a right-hemisphere advantage for boys. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
