Sex and Short-Term Memory

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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...

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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.

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