Real reasons women remember things more than men

In their 24-month-old marriage, Kingsley
and his wife, Victoria, have had a number
of conflicts than they envisaged, and most
of the time, it could have been avoided.
Even though the issues involved do not
qualify as something that could tear them
apart, it became a major cause of concern
to the wife.
According to Victoria, a 32-year-old
business woman, her husband’s
forgetfulness is one issue she had yet to
come to terms with. “It’s so bad that
sometimes he forgets my birthday,
sometimes it could be to pick our clothes
from the drycleaner, and from time to time,
he scatters many things in the house
because he is always looking for his
things,” she added.
Kingsley’s case might sound extreme, but
he is certainly not alone, especially among
fellow men.
While Kingsley and Victoria would continue
to deal with theirs, Mr. and Mrs.
Anifowose, who have been married for 15
years, say they have devised a means to
manage theirs, as the man said his wife
had taken the place of his reminder since
she’s the one who reminds him of
everything.
He said, “What I do is to tell her anything I
don’t want to forget, and I tell her when to
remind me. Guess what, she doesn’t fail
me, and sometimes I ask myself if I’m
suffering from amnesia or she is just
gifted. And she doesn’t use any organiser.
It amazes me, really.”
These two accounts somewhat give a
fresh perspective to the fact that there is
a wide range of differences between men
and women, beyond their anatomy.
Meanwhile, findings by some researchers
have shown that women have better
retentive memory than men.
In a study by Prof. Qi Wang, an expert in
human development at Cornell University’s
College of Human Ecology, New York,
United States, it was found that gender has
a role to play in how people remember
things.
In the course of the study, which involved
60 college undergraduates, she sent three
text messages to them in one week, and
instructed them to write down what had
happened to them during the previous 30
minutes. Thus, once they received the text,
they should quickly type their experience
within the last 30 minutes and forward to
her for documentation.
At the end of the week, she asked all of
them to describe in detail those events
they wrote about in the text messages.
She titled the study ‘Gender and Emotion
in Everyday Event Memory.’
According to the result of the exercise,
which was posted on the institution’s
website, the researcher found that the
women in the study wrote more detailed
piece on their past 30 minutes experience
in the text message they sent. And beyond
that, they were able to recall more details
about what they sent via the text message
than men after one week.
Wang ascribed the difference to the fact
that women pay more attention to
happenings and are able to recall such
when needed.
Wang said, “It appears that, compared with
men, women may attend to and encode
more information during ongoing events,
experience similar rates of forgetting, and
then show greater ability to access
retained event information at recall.
“Our findings also suggest that the content
of memories is reconstructed over time in
a gendered fashion. The findings help us
understand gender differences in memory
and inform the theoretical debate about
where in the memory formation process
these differences emerge.
“These findings are provocative in showing
that women and men see their worlds
differently, likely due to different cognitive
styles, and that gendered ideologies come
into play in memory reconstruction.”
In another study by Dr. Liana Palermo, a
researcher at Aston University,
Birmingham, United Kingdom, it was
equally discovered that women are better
at remembering things than men, which he
ascribed to the fact that women develop
the ability when they juggle responsibilities
at home with their career and that it may
be due to hormones or brain structure. He
said men helping in the home could boost
their memory.
He involved 100 men and women, aged
between 15 and 40 in a task that puts
them through a series of memory tests.
And at the end of the study, it was
concluded that even though both men and
women find it hard to remember things as
they age, women are still better at
remembering things.
He also points to the fact that previous
research has shown that in men, the
brain’s memory hub shrinks when they are
between 20 and 40 years old, unlike in
women.
In the study published on Quarterly Journal
of Experimental Psychology and reviewed on
Daily Mail, he said, “An alternative
hypothesis is that the sex differences we
found could be due to the care-taking role
often assumed by women and the fact that
in addition to work responsibilities, women
also have more responsibilities at home.
“This means that the skill needed to
balance running a home and bringing up
children with holding down a job improves
prospective memory.
“A real life example of this would be, in a
family, you would expect the woman to be
the one to remember to buy some milk
after work. Or she will remember to give a
book back to a friend when she sees him
next. She will be better at all of these
kinds of tasks than a man.
“As a consequence of this social role, in
daily life women might perform tasks
involving prospective memory more than
men, enhancing their performance in
remembering to remember. If this is the
case, one way for men to improve their
memory would be to help more around the
home.
Meanwhile, an expert in gender and
memory at Hamilton College, New Zealand,
Azriel Grysman, said women having better
memory could be traced to when they
were young, when parents often demand
details of their experiences.
According to Grysman, demanding more
details from girls than boys at that early
age is indirectly training them to take note
of details and remember them when asked.
“Kids whose mothers asked them to
elaborate more when they were young had
better recall as adults, and gender norms
orient girls more toward elaboration than
boys, which may lead to better memories,”
she said.
Explaining further in a piece on New York
Magazine, she said, “A memory is a
pattern of mental activity, and the more
entry points we have to what that pattern
might be, the more chances we have to
retrieve it. Since girls are more likely to be
trained to elaborate and include their
feelings in their memory-making, they are
more likely to remember better.
“It’s quite possible, over time, that those
tendencies will help women establish more
connections of different pieces of an event
in their brains, which will lead to better
memory long-term.”
Giving a perspective to the studies, A
neurologist, Dr. Adilkaibe Ezeala, said if
there is any difference in the ability of men
and women to remember things when
compared, it would be psychological and
not because a part of the brain is
responsible for it. He explained that the
part of the brain responsible for memory;
the temporal lobe, and to some extent the
frontal lobe, are present in both men and
women.
Meanwhile, a psychologist, Dr. Adepeju
Omoteso, said there are many aspects to
remembering things, and that if it is about
the cognitive aspect, which has to do with
what they are learning in school, men and
women tend to be on the same level, but
when it comes to social things, because
women are more emotional, they don’t
forget things easily, most especially the
wrong done to them.
She said, “Men may forget things more
than women because they don’t have time
to think of many other things that women
think about. Even when they are involved
in the same kind of work, the women
would likely remember things more than
men.
“Women also remember things because
they are good record keepers, while men
don’t bother about several things. I don’t
think it has anything to do with the brain,
even though there are many faculties in
the brain. There is a faculty in the brain
where feelings and associated issues are
kept, and because women are more
sentimental, they tend to remember all
those things. Whatever touches on their
emotions, they will remember.
Omoteso explained further that when it
comes to episodic memory, women are
better at remembering events. Episodic
memory is the memory of autobiographical
events (times, places, associated
emotions, and other contextual who, what,
when, where and why) that can be
explicitly stated. It is the collection of past
personal experiences that occurred at a
particular time and place.
“When it comes to the social aspect,
women will always remember those things
more than men,” she added.