ReviewPrenatal sex hormone effects on child and adult sex-typed behavior: methods and findings
Section snippets
General considerations and caveats
Before moving to the specific methods, we highlight a number of theoretical and methodological issues relevant to evaluating all studies of human hormoneābehavior relations.
Studies in clinical populations
The early studies in animals showing behavioral effects of early hormones prompted studies of people with atypical hormone exposure, i.e. in which the sex hormones are higher or lower than expected for a person's sex [63]. Early studies involving such āexperiments of natureā suggested an important role for sex hormones, confirming studies in other species, but they were criticized for methodological limitations, especially subjective measures and insufficient controls. Recent studies with
Studies in typical populations
Clinical populations have provided valuable information about hormonal contributors to behavior, but they are not perfect experiments (because of the methodological limitations and concerns about generalizability described above) and they are also difficult to study (because of their relatively low frequency and the sampling problems described above). There has thus been an increased interest in developing alternative ways to study behavioral effects of prenatal hormones, particularly within
Background
Most evidence for behavioral and physiological effects of early hormones comes from nonhuman studies in which hormones are directly manipulated. Interestingly, however, there is good evidence that behavior and physiology are influenced by naturally occurring variations in hormones that result from an animal's position in the uterus, particularly the sex of its littermates (intrauterine position, IUP) [[17], [171], [172]]. Female rodents that developed between male fetuses in utero are less
Studies in typical populations: biological markers as indirect indicators of prenatal hormones
Three relatively new methods for investigating behavioral effects of prenatal exposure to sex hormones involve use of morphological indices, specifically otoacoustic emissions (reflecting auditory function), finger ratio (the relative lengths of the index and ring fingers), and dermatoglyphics (fingerprints). These markers are assumed to reflect prenatal exposure to sex hormones, and are examined in relation to postnatal behavior, with associations between these markers and behavior taken to
Summary and conclusions
As is apparent, there is a lot of interest and work dedicated to understanding the human behavioral consequences of prenatal exposure to sex hormones. Although there is still work to be done, there is increasing convergence of evidence across methods showing the masculinizing effects of prenatal androgens, especially at high doses of androgens and especially for sex-typed interests, spatial ability, and aspects of personality. Thus, it seems likely that androgens are responsible for some of the
Acknowledgements
We thank Carolina de Weerth for inviting us to write this paper and for her help during its preparation, Catherine Bakey for her help with the literature on dermatoglyphic asymmetry, and the editors and anonymous reviewers for their careful reading and helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We also acknowledge grants that supported the preparation of this chapter and our own research reported here: Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) grants 575-25-011
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2022, Physiology and BehaviorCitation Excerpt :Whilst this is not surprising, the same effect has been identified in male rats [43]. Similarly, in humans, the prenatal effects of testosterone could delay sperm production [44] and a low R2D:4D relative to L2D:4D (or low Dr-l) was related to delayed maturation [39]. Consequently, the positive relationship in the small sub-set of boys could return to a negative one when low R2D:4D athletes catch up in pubertal maturation.
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These two authors contributed equally to the paper.