Nevertheless, women with healthy aging brains continue to have an edge over their male counterparts when it comes to memory function, even in midlife and older age. Indeed, some studies suggest that, even from childhood, women outperform men in memory tasks. This is especially true of verbal memory.
Sex Differences in Memory
Females tend to perform better than males in verbal-based episodic memory tasks, as opposed to spatial-based memory tasks [10]. Females generally access their memories faster than males [11], date them more precisely [12], and use more emotional terms when describing memories [13].
These little details can serve as “retrieval clues” that help us to remember events of the past. A similar study of college undergrads published in the journal Memory, revealed women remembered events more accurately after a week than men, because of the same encoding techniques.
Men's higher level visual episodic memory performance was found to result from their advantage in visuospatial ability. Finally, possible methodological, biological, and cognitive explanations for the current findings are discussed.
It is now recognized that there are no significant sex differences in general intelligence, though particular subtypes of intelligence vary somewhat between sexes. While some test batteries show slightly greater intelligence in males, others show slightly greater intelligence in females.
"What we have found is that women, in many different tasks, process information about five times faster than men, and use much less of their brain to do identical cognitive performance."
Memory loss
Research suggests that there may be gendered differences in rates of memory decline. While research on the subject has not always been consistent, it's clear that men and women experience significantly different rates of memory decline throughout their life.
Females tend to think more observantly and women tend to be more observant. Men tend to be more logical emotionally. They tend to put importance on their feelings and observations about a situation.
The study highlighted that women are 86% more likely to display consistent and effective emotional self-awareness than men, and are 45% more likely to demonstrate consistent empathy.
In 70 of those regions, female brains showed significantly more activity than male brains. Overall, women have much busier brains compared with men. In problem-solving, women tend to harness several areas of the brain while men rely on a more localized effort.
(Not) All About Size. Although the male brain is 10 percent larger than the female brain, it does not impact intelligence. Despite the size difference, men's and women's brains are more alike than they are different. One area in which they do differ is the inferior-parietal lobule, which tends to be larger in men.
In another study, women excelled in verbal episodic memory tasks—such as remembering words, objects, pictures, or everyday events—but men outperformed women in remembering symbolic, non-linguistic information, known as visuospatial processing (Herlitz & Rehnman, 2008).
Women tend to score higher than men on measures of emotional intelligence, but gender stereotypes of men and women can affect how they express emotions. The sex difference is small to moderate, somewhat inconsistent, and is often influenced by the person's motivations or social environment.
Studies have shown that adolescent girls tend to have lower self-esteem and more negative assessments of their physical characteristics and intellectual abilities than boys have. These findings may explain why the incidence of suicide attempts, depression, and eating disorders is substantially higher in girls.
Compared to men, women listed more goals, and a smaller proportion of women's goals were related to achieving power. These findings dovetailed with the results of prior research that, relative to women, men are more motivated by power. These differences contribute to men holding higher leadership positions than women.
Their findings reveal that the average boy is more active than about 69 percent of girls. That gap is statistically moderate, larger than differences in verbal and math skills but small enough to permit many exceptions to the rule, notably the 31 percent of girls who are more active than the average boy.
Girls are socialized to be nurturing, care about others, show emotions, get along and be empathetic. Girls learn that the process is more important than winning and that relationships are key. In these early lessons, boys start developing the skills to be assertive and confident.
Indeed, research has shown that women often score higher on emotional intelligence or empathy tests than men, especially, but not only [10], if measured through self-reports, such as the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i [11]) the Empathy Quotient [12], the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) [13], or emotional ...
Adjusted for total brain size (men's are bigger), a woman's hippocampus, critical to learning and memorization, is larger than a man's and works differently. Conversely, a man's amygdala, associated with the experiencing of emotions and the recollection of such experiences, is bigger than a woman's.
Generally, women perform better when it comes to remembering verbal information, such as words, sentences, texts, and objects, but also the location of objects, and movies. Men can better recall abstract images and remember their way back from one location to another.
For example, women are more likely to have certain mental health conditions, like depression. Men are more likely to have certain neurodevelopmental conditions, such as autism spectrum disorder. Studies have also shown sex differences in certain cognitive tasks, like the ability to recognize faces.
Accumulating evidence suggests that males outperform females on mental rotation tasks as early as infancy.
In a study of 465 neurologically intact adults, Good et al. (2001) found that males exhibited significantly higher gray matter volume in the majority of brain regions, yet they also found some clusters in which women had higher volumes than men.
Among humans, women's life span is almost 8% on average longer than men's life span. But among wild mammals, females in 60% of the studied species have, on average, 18.6% longer lifespans.
Women have a greater risk of developing dementia during their lifetime. In fact, around twice as many women have Alzheimer's disease – the most common type of dementia – compared to men. The main reason for this greater risk is because women live longer than men and old age is the biggest risk factor for this disease.