Line bisection-based hemisphericity estimates of university students and professionals: evidence of sorting during higher education and career selection.

Recently, hemisphericity has been assessed by six intercorrelated methods. Here, one of these, the "Best Hand Test," a two-hand line bisection-based biophysical method relatively independent of language, culture, or education, was applied to the measurement of hemisphericity distributions within large groups. Entering university students (n=402) enrolled in three lower division courses were chosen as a reference population. Each of these classes contained about 56% left brain-oriented individuals. In contrast, mean student left-brain distributions in four specialized, upper level courses (n=180), ranged from 35 to 68%, suggestive of hemisphericity sorting. Even more pronounced hemisphericity distribution differences were found within university representatives of 15 professions (n=421) and within professional subspecialists (n=45). For example, of biochemists (n=18), 83% were left brain-oriented, while among astronomers (n=21), only 29% were. These results are of intrinsic interest, and demonstrate the capability of the Best Hand Test to estimate hemisphericity in large groups.