Sex differences in face recognition--women's faces make the difference.

Full Abstract

Sex differences favoring women have been found in face recognition tasks as well as in verbal episodic memory tasks. Women's higher face recognition performance was hypothesized to be related to either their higher verbal ability or to their superiority in recognizing female faces, rather than faces in general. Results showed that whereas there were no differences between men and women in the recognition of male faces, or in verbal ability, women performed at a higher level than men in the recognition of female faces. Verbal ability did not influence women's face recognition performance. Potential explanations for this pattern of data, such as sex differences in interest and prior knowledge, are discussed.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Lewin, Catharina (C); Herlitz, Agneta (A);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm S-106 91, Sweden. catharina.lewin@psychology.su.se

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Brain and cognition (Brain Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Oct; vol 50 (issue 1) : pp 121-8

Dates: Created 2002/10/09; Completed 2002/12/31; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12372357, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Cognition - physiology
Facial Expression
Female
Humans
Male

This article has not been indexed for related articles as yet, however you can still use the live related article search links below.

See 100+ related articles.