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Digit Ratio Predicts Sense of Direction in Women
The relative length of the second-to-fourth digits (2D:4D) has been linked with prenatal androgen in humans. The 2D:4D is sexually dimorphic, with lower values in males than females, and appears to correlate with diverse measures of behavior. However, the relationship between digit ratio and cogniti...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3290629/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22393451 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032816 |
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author | Chai, Xiaoqian J. Jacobs, Lucia F. |
author_facet | Chai, Xiaoqian J. Jacobs, Lucia F. |
author_sort | Chai, Xiaoqian J. |
collection | PubMed |
description | The relative length of the second-to-fourth digits (2D:4D) has been linked with prenatal androgen in humans. The 2D:4D is sexually dimorphic, with lower values in males than females, and appears to correlate with diverse measures of behavior. However, the relationship between digit ratio and cognition, and spatial cognition in particular, has produced mixed results. In the present study, we hypothesized that spatial tasks separating cue conditions that either favored female or male strategies would examine this structure-function correlation with greater precision. Previous work suggests that males are better in the use of directional cues than females. In the present study, participants learned a target location in a virtual landscape environment, in conditions that contained either all directional (i.e., distant or compass bearing) cues, or all positional (i.e., local, small objects) cues. After a short delay, participants navigated back to the target location from a novel starting location. Males had higher accuracy in initial search direction than females in environments with all directional cues. Lower digit ratio was correlated with higher accuracy of initial search direction in females in environments with all directional cues. Mental rotation scores did not correlate with digit ratio in either males or females. These results demonstrate for the first time that a sex difference in the use of directional cues, i.e., the sense of direction, is associated with more male-like digit ratio. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3290629 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2012 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-32906292012-03-05 Digit Ratio Predicts Sense of Direction in Women Chai, Xiaoqian J. Jacobs, Lucia F. PLoS One Research Article The relative length of the second-to-fourth digits (2D:4D) has been linked with prenatal androgen in humans. The 2D:4D is sexually dimorphic, with lower values in males than females, and appears to correlate with diverse measures of behavior. However, the relationship between digit ratio and cognition, and spatial cognition in particular, has produced mixed results. In the present study, we hypothesized that spatial tasks separating cue conditions that either favored female or male strategies would examine this structure-function correlation with greater precision. Previous work suggests that males are better in the use of directional cues than females. In the present study, participants learned a target location in a virtual landscape environment, in conditions that contained either all directional (i.e., distant or compass bearing) cues, or all positional (i.e., local, small objects) cues. After a short delay, participants navigated back to the target location from a novel starting location. Males had higher accuracy in initial search direction than females in environments with all directional cues. Lower digit ratio was correlated with higher accuracy of initial search direction in females in environments with all directional cues. Mental rotation scores did not correlate with digit ratio in either males or females. These results demonstrate for the first time that a sex difference in the use of directional cues, i.e., the sense of direction, is associated with more male-like digit ratio. Public Library of Science 2012-02-29 /pmc/articles/PMC3290629/ /pubmed/22393451 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032816 Text en Chai, Jacobs. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Chai, Xiaoqian J. Jacobs, Lucia F. Digit Ratio Predicts Sense of Direction in Women |
title | Digit Ratio Predicts Sense of Direction in Women |
title_full | Digit Ratio Predicts Sense of Direction in Women |
title_fullStr | Digit Ratio Predicts Sense of Direction in Women |
title_full_unstemmed | Digit Ratio Predicts Sense of Direction in Women |
title_short | Digit Ratio Predicts Sense of Direction in Women |
title_sort | digit ratio predicts sense of direction in women |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3290629/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22393451 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0032816 |
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