Women's advantage on verbal memory is not restricted to concrete words.

Full Abstract

It is well established that women perform better than men on tests of verbal memory, but the nature of this advantage is unclear. To examine whether reference to a real object is a factor, we presented several verbal memory tasks, including one containing words high and low in concreteness. Over all tests there was an expected female advantage. Although concrete words were recalled much better than abstract words, the female advantage was equivalent on both. The sex difference was not accounted for by a difference in verbal intelligence. Possible brain and adaptive mechanisms are discussed.

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Author information

Author/s: Kimura, Doreen (D); Clarke, Paul G (PG);

Affiliation: Psychology Department, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6. dkimura@sfu.ca

Journal and publication information

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

Journal: Psychological reports (Psychol Rep), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Dec; vol 91 (issue 3 Pt 2) : pp 1137-42

Dates: Created 2003/02/14; Completed 2003/04/07; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12585526, 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.

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adolescent
Adult
Female
Gender Identity
Humans
Male
Mental Recall

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