ABSTRACT
The ratio of the length of the 2nd and 4th digits of the hand is an indicator of prenatal testosterone exposure and has been shown to be a within sex correlate of various abilities, such as visuo-spatial processing in men. However, a number of studies report such links also exist in women, whilst others show no link for either sex. Using a unique paradigm that sub-divides visuo-spatial processing into a distinct subset of component skills we found a strong correlation between finger ratio and spatial memory performance specifically under stereo viewing conditions in women. We argue that the current ambiguity regarding links between digit-ratio and visuo-spatial ability is the result of a lack of clarity between the component skills recruited in different visuo-spatial tasks. Our task independently tested a subset of the component skills used in visuo-spatial tasks such as: mental rotation, cross-dimensionality processing and feature detection. Our results show that digit-ratio, a physical parameter linked to prenatal testosterone levels, indicates performance on a distinct aspect of visuo-spatial processing in women, without contradicting previous links for visuo-spatial processing in men. These results offer an explanation for the differences in previous findings linking visuo-spatial processing in both men and women.