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Gender and Memory

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Submitted By wickless123
Words 900
Pages 4
Elizabeth Burke
October 8, 2013
Gender Affecting Memory A great debate in psychology is whether gender affects memory. There has been a lot of controversy and research conducted to explain the question, does gender affect memory? After properly reviewing articles about this topic, I have concluded gender doesn’t affect memory but whether how memory is processed. Each gender has their own advantage when it comes to memory. Memory is processed differently between males and females. Women have better long term- episodic memory, while men have better long- term semantic memory.
Due to verbal clues, women are more likely to remember events that are associated with emotions. These include weddings, birthday parties, or anniversaries. Due to visual clues, men are more likely to remember functions associated with tactics. These include traveling, trivia, and direction. For example, a man is more likely to able to find his way out of a forest than a woman. The size of the male and female brain differs. In a scan of the female brain, it was proven the limbic cortices, which regulates emotion, was larger. The limbic cortex also processes language. Women have neurons that are tightly packed. This allows faster communications to be made. The connections they make are more complex and sophisticated. This could explain why woman are better at multi- tasking. The scan showed the female brain has larger corpus callosum, which is bundle of nerves that connects emotion and cognition. As a result, women are better with language abilities rely more heavily on oral or verbal communication. “If a female were to have a stroke in the left- front side of the brain, she may still retain some language from the right front- side. The female brain is more diffused and utilizes significant portions of both hemispheres for a variety of tasks. They are able to use both sides of their brain for language because their brain has a larger corpus callosum, which allows them to transfer information between both hemispheres of the brain.”(Hatcher) “In a scan of the male brain it was proven their brain size is larger than females.
Their parietal cortices, which regulates space perception, and amygdala, which regulates sexual and social behavior, are larger. This explains why visual- spatial tasks are easier for males.”(Hatcher) Males have more gray matter in their brains, which is full of active neurons. This explains why there are more men in physically or mentally active professions such as airplane pilots, bush guides, race car drivers, and mathematicians.
Males are systematic in thinking. For males, language is in the dominant hemisphere. A male’s brain performs tasks predominantly with the left side, which is the logical side of the brain. The male brain is highly specialized, using specific parts of one hemisphere or the other to accomplish specific tasks. While males may fail to match a female’s ability to remember the date of an anniversary, they are better at storing a seemingly endless cache of facts and figures.
Scientists believe they have now uncovered the reason for this difference between the sexes. They make the memories in different ways. “Researchers at the Institute of
Psychiatry, King’s College London, have found that males use different genes from females when making the new connections in the brain that are needed to create long- term memories.”(Hatcher) They believe this might explain why males are better at remembering tactical memories, such as travel directions and trivia, while women remember more emotional memories such as birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and details about the world around them. Women have an enhanced ability to recall memories that have strong emotional components. They can also recall events or experiences that have similar emotions in common. Women are very adept at recalling information, events or experiences in which there is common emotional theme. Men tend to recall events using strategies that rely on reconstructing the experience in terms of elements, tasks, or activities that took place. Males and females approach problems with similar goals but with different considerations. “For most women, sharing and discussing a problem presents an opportunity to explore, deepen, or strengthen the relationship with the person they are talking with. Women are usually more concerned about how problems are solving that merely solving the problem itself.”(Washburn, 2005) For women, solving the problem can profoundly impact whether they feel closer and less alone or whether they feel distant and less connected. The process of solving a problem can strengthen or weaken a relationship. Males approach problems in a very different manner than females. “For most males, solving a problem presents an opportunity to demonstrate their competence, strength of resolve, and their commitment into a relationship. Males dominate and assume authority in a problem solving process.”(Washburn, 2005) Males and females process memory very differently because of different factors.
These factors include brain size, task, emotion, understanding, and environmental factors. Although there are times wherein one gender dominates the other, no gender has better memory than the other.

Work Citied
Hatcher, D.W., & Lawton, C.A., “Gender differences in integration of images in visuospatial memory.” Sex Roles, 53, 717-24. Retrieved 4 October 2013
Sinha, G. (2005). Training the brain. Scientific American, Vol. 293 Issue 1, 66-68.
Retrieved 4 October 2013
Washburn, D. (2005). Individual differences in metacognitive responsiveness: cognitive and personality correlates. Journal of General Psychology, Vol. 132 Issue 4, 446-
461. Retrieved 4 October 2013

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