A Twin Study of Individual Differences in Perceptual Asymmetry

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Individual differences in perceptual asymmetry have been associated with individual differences in cognitive abilities, personality characteristics, and psychiatric symptoms, for which between-person variation appears to be genetically influenced. Perceptual asymmetry scores are also associated with direction of handedness, for which between-person variation does not appear to be genetically influenced. To assess whether between-person variation of perceptual asymmetry scores is genetically influenced, we examined asymmetry on a free-vision task of face processing, the Chimeric Faces Task (CFT), in a sample of 31 monozygotic (MZ) and 20 same-sex dizygotic (DZ) twin pairs. MZ and DZ within-twin-pair resemblances were compared to assess genetic and familial influences on asymmetric hemispheric function. We found that twins within a pair were no more likely to resemble each other than were unrelated individuals. The results suggest that the between-person variation in CFT perceptual asymmetry is not influenced by genes or shared environment.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)299-311
Number of pages13
JournalLaterality
Volume4
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 1999

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)
  • General Psychology

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