title: Women's advantage on verbal memory is not restricted to concrete words.
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.
authors.affiliation: Psychology Department, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6. dkimura@sfu.ca
authors.forename: Doreen
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kimura
authors.forename: Paul G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Clarke
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D005783:Gender Identity; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011939:Mental Recall; D010153:Paired-Associate Learning; D012660:Semantics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D014706:Verbal Learning; D014825:Vocabulary