One of the most common narratives portrayed in the media consists of the bumbling husband or boyfriend who has forgotten about his partner's birthday, or their one-year anniversary, or even Valentine's Day. He scrambles around frantically in an attempt to disguise his lack of preparedness, lest his partner discover how poor he is at remembering crucial and symbolic milestones. Regardless of whether or not he succeeds, hilarity generally ensues and the stereotype of the careless, insensitive male is further cemented in popular culture. Indeed, the general population does express the belief that women have a better memory than men, and it is tough to say whether this recurring theme in entertainment is a product of this belief, or if it is the influence that has lead to the widespread assumption that women are better at remembering (Knox 1; Loftus et al. 19). In any case, research has shown that this universal notion can only be partially validated; while women are generally superior when it comes to long-term memory and aspects of short-term memory such as multitasking and remembering faces, men excel in other areas that require an equally high short-term memory capacity ("Sex Differences in Memory"; Knox 3; Speck et al. 2583). Short-term memory (STM) is defined by Revlin as the system that facilitates the successful performance of "moment-to-moment" activities, such as retaining mental shopping lists and remembering phone numbers (119). As implied by its name, STM describes the compartment of the human mind that can only hold so much information—about 7 unrelated items—for approximately 18 seconds at a time (Revlin 120-125). Baddeleyrefers to the mechanical component of STM that is not concerned with storage as "working mem... ... middle of paper ... ... Works Cited Association for Psychological Science. "Sex Differences In Memory: Women Better Than Men At Remembering Everyday Events." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 21 February 2008. . Baddeley, A. D. "Working memory: An overview." Working memory and education (2006): 1- 31. Knox, Richard, et al. "Short term memory based on gender." Pennsylvania: Penn State University (2007). Loftus, Elizabeth F., et al. "Who remembers what? Gender differences in memory." Michigan Quarterly Review 26 (1987): 64-85. Revlin, Russell. "Short Term Memory and Working Memory." Cognition: theory and practice. New York, NY: Worth Publishers, 2013. 118-149. Print. Speck, Oliver, et al. "Gender differences in the functional organization of the brain for working memory." Neuroreport 11.11 (2000): 2581-2585.
Click here to unlock this and over one million essays
Show MoreIt is no secret that boys and girls grow up hearing about all of their differences. In Hyde’s article, “The Gender Similarities Hypothesis”, she recognizes the frequency of psychological studies done to prove that males and females are very different. It is a common belief that males and females have more mental differences than similarities. As Hyde’s article explains, this seems to be untrue. In fact, it is the opposite that Hyde finds true. She claims that males and females are almost completely psychologically the same, with only a few differences. In her article, she compares meta-analyses of different functions such as math computation, special perception, helping behavior, and more. She found that the vast majority of these experiments showed small differences between the abilities of males versus those of
Mulligan, N. W., & Picklesimer, M. (2012). Levels of processing and the cue-dependent nature of recollection. Journal of Memory and Language, 66(1), 79-92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2011.10.001
It is proven that the male and female brains differ, but can one prove that it affects the behavior? Many scientists would agree that ones behavior is determined by his/her gender. Although others are convinced that social conditioning is the cause for the differences between the male and female, it is very unlikely that biological differences play no role in behavior. The male and female brains differ not only by how they work, but also on the size. For example, Natalie Angier and Kenneth Chang, neuroscientists, have shown that the women’s brain is about 10 percent smaller than the male’s, on average, even after accounting for women’s comparatively smaller body size. Three brain differences that affect ones behavior are the limbic size, the corpus collosum size, and the amount of gray and white matter.
personality obtained through the functional profile” (Nostro. 11). The abovementioned scene of a father’s behavior toward his son versus his daughter signifies the distribution of these sex hormones in the body. While many behaviors and personalities performed by both sexes can be signs of stereotypical gender roles, a few of them actually correlate with the way that the brain is structured. Tanya Lewis’ article How Men's Brains provided an informative discussion about the gendered brains and the anatomical framework that is presented in both
Roediger, H. L., & McDermott, K. B. (2000). Tricks of Memory. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 123-7.
Experience plays an immense role in presenting the desolation that age and education has on one's capacity to remember. Individuals compare and contrast the correlation between these two variables; for example, the greater ones age the less recollection they seem to have. However, Psychologists Agneta Herlitz and Jenny Rehnman challenged this case by presenting a similar a preposition comparing two opposite variables: Does one’s sex affect his or her ability to remember day to day events? The interconnection between sex and memory is surprisingly a controversial topic. According to the research they provide, an individual’s sex does, indeed, play an immense role in commemorating the affairs that arise day to day.
J., & Banich, M. T. (2003). Memory. In M. T. Banich (Ed.), Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology (pp. 322-364). Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Farrants, J. (1998, September). The 'false' memory debate. Counseling Psychology Quarterly. Retrieved September 14, 2000 from ProQuest database (Bell & Howell Information and Learning-ProQuest) on the World Wide Web: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb
Dr. John Nicholson, author of "A Question of Sex", states that men and women are different in the types of mental tasks they perform (120). Times magazine states in an article published in January 1992, that "Males excel at rotating three-dimensional objects in their head. Females prove better at reading the emotions of people in photographs" (121). The author of the article is referring to the fact that maybe our brains are put together differently.
Stern, L. D., Marrs, S., Millar, M.G. & Cole, E. (1984). Processing Time and th Recall of Inconsistent and Consistent Behviors of Individuals and Groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 253-262.
Atkinson, R.C. & Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control process.
Without short-term memory, completing routine daily tasks, those we take for granted, would be challenging. Something as simple as writing down a new phone number or address would be burdensome. Memory and factors effecting memory have been the focus of thousands of experiments in the field of psychology.
Short-term memory is a broad topic that has been studied by many psychologists for many years to discover the factors of cognition. Many past studies have concluded that short term memory is very limited and can only hold up to just a few seconds of information. In order to retain information for a longer period of time, many techniques such as repeating information, can possibly be converted into long term memory. The purpose of current study is to determine which gender can score higher on a short term memory assessment when placed under a time constraint. This experiment was designed after a research done by George A. Miller. He was the founder of cognitive psychology; who discovered that people are able to memorize seven numbers plus or
Conner, Steve. "The Hardwired Difference between Male and Female Brains Could Explain Why Men Are 'better at Map Reading'" The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media, 03 Feb. 2013. Web.
3. 3}Are There Differences between the Brains of Males and Females?,Intellectual differences among the sexes.