title: Sex differences in face recognition--women's faces make the difference.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, Stockholm S-106 91, Sweden. catharina.lewin@psychology.su.se
authors.forename: Catharina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lewin
authors.forename: Agneta
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Herlitz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology; D005149:Facial Expression; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012737:Sex Factors; D014796:Visual Perception