According to a longstanding view, sex differences in cognitive abilities such as mental rotation or verbal memory arise from sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry: males are thought to be more lateralized than females which boosts their spatial but hampers their verbal skills. This idea sparked great interest and, even though it lost support in the 1990s, it is still put forward in contemporary (popular) scientific papers and textbooks. We aimed to provide a comprehensive review that summarizes the last 40 years of research. First, we confirm previous findings that the stronger hemispheric asymmetry in males is very small but robust. Second, we conclude that stronger hemispheric asymmetry, in general, does not enhance spatial and reduce verbal performance. Crucially, we carried out a systematic literature review showing that cognitive sex differences often emerge in the absence of sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry (and vice versa), implying the two phenomena are at least partly independent of each other. At present, there is insufficient data to conclude that sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry and cognitive performance are uncorrelated. However, we can conclude that sex differences in hemispheric asymmetry are certainly not the driving force behind sex differences in cognitive functioning.

从长远来看，大脑半球不对称的性别差异导致了认知能力的性别差异，例如心理旋转或言语记忆：男性被认为比女性更偏于男性，这增加了他们的空间，但却阻碍了他们的语言表达能力。这个想法引起了极大的兴趣，尽管它在1990年代失去了支持，但仍然在当代（受欢迎的）科学论文和教科书中提出。我们旨在提供一个全面的综述，总结过去40年的研究。首先，我们确认先前的发现，男性更强的半球不对称性很小，但很健壮。第二，我们得出结论，一般来说，较强的半球不对称性不会增强空间并降低言语表达。至关重要的是 我们进行了系统的文献综述，结果表明，认知性别差异通常会在不存在半球不对称性性别差异的情况下出现（反之亦然），这意味着这两种现象至少部分彼此独立。目前，尚无足够的数据得出结论，认为半球不对称的性别差异与认知能力无关。然而，我们可以得出结论，半球不对称的性别差异当然不是认知功能中性别差异背后的驱动力。