Sex-related differences in vision are heterogeneous

Albulena Shaqiri; Maya Roinishvili; Lukasz Grzeczkowski; Eka Chkonia; Karin Pilz; Christine Mohr; Andreas Brand; Marina Kunchulia; Michael H. Herzog

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-25298-8

Sex-related differences in vision are heterogeneous

Albulena Shaqiri, Maya Roinishvili, Lukasz Grzeczkowski, Eka Chkonia, Karin Pilz, Christine Mohr, Andreas Brand, Marina Kunchulia, Michael H. Herzog

Psychology

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65 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

Despite well-established sex differences for cognition, audition, and somatosensation, few studies have investigated whether there are also sex differences in visual perception. We report the results of fifteen perceptual measures (such as visual acuity, visual backward masking, contrast detection threshold or motion detection) for a cohort of over 800 participants. On six of the fifteen tests, males significantly outperformed females. On no test did females significantly outperform males. Given this heterogeneity of the sex effects, it is unlikely that the sex differences are due to any single mechanism. A practical consequence of the results is that it is important to control for sex in vision research, and that findings of sex differences for cognitive measures using visually based tasks should confirm that their results cannot be explained by baseline sex differences in visual perception.

Original language	English
Article number	7521
Pages (from-to)	1-10
Number of pages	10
Journal	Scientific Reports
Volume	8
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-25298-8
Publication status	Published - 14 May 2018

Bibliographical note

We would like to thank Britt Anderson and Matt Pachai for their precious help on this manuscript. This work was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) SYNAPSY of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and by the Velux Foundation.

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Sex-related diferences in vision are heterogeneous
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Cite this

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title = "Sex-related differences in vision are heterogeneous",

abstract = "Despite well-established sex differences for cognition, audition, and somatosensation, few studies have investigated whether there are also sex differences in visual perception. We report the results of fifteen perceptual measures (such as visual acuity, visual backward masking, contrast detection threshold or motion detection) for a cohort of over 800 participants. On six of the fifteen tests, males significantly outperformed females. On no test did females significantly outperform males. Given this heterogeneity of the sex effects, it is unlikely that the sex differences are due to any single mechanism. A practical consequence of the results is that it is important to control for sex in vision research, and that findings of sex differences for cognitive measures using visually based tasks should confirm that their results cannot be explained by baseline sex differences in visual perception.",

author = "Albulena Shaqiri and Maya Roinishvili and Lukasz Grzeczkowski and Eka Chkonia and Karin Pilz and Christine Mohr and Andreas Brand and Marina Kunchulia and Herzog, {Michael H.}",

note = "We would like to thank Britt Anderson and Matt Pachai for their precious help on this manuscript. This work was supported by the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) SYNAPSY of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) and by the Velux Foundation.",

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AU - Shaqiri, Albulena

AU - Roinishvili, Maya

AU - Grzeczkowski, Lukasz

AU - Chkonia, Eka

AU - Pilz, Karin

AU - Mohr, Christine

AU - Brand, Andreas

AU - Kunchulia, Marina

AU - Herzog, Michael H.

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N2 - Despite well-established sex differences for cognition, audition, and somatosensation, few studies have investigated whether there are also sex differences in visual perception. We report the results of fifteen perceptual measures (such as visual acuity, visual backward masking, contrast detection threshold or motion detection) for a cohort of over 800 participants. On six of the fifteen tests, males significantly outperformed females. On no test did females significantly outperform males. Given this heterogeneity of the sex effects, it is unlikely that the sex differences are due to any single mechanism. A practical consequence of the results is that it is important to control for sex in vision research, and that findings of sex differences for cognitive measures using visually based tasks should confirm that their results cannot be explained by baseline sex differences in visual perception.

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Sex-related differences in vision are heterogeneous

Abstract

Bibliographical note

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