The Effects of Gender Differences on Memory

As is well known for all, gender plays a vital role in deciding the differences between men and women. In biological aspect, men are stronger than women so that men have advantages over women in heavy lavatorial work while women are more dexterous and ingenious than men in some works needing to care, like needleworks. This difference may be explained by the evolution theory. Besides the different biological structures between male and female, their thinking patterns are totally different as well. Men tend to be more logical and reasonable, but women favour to be more direct and emotional. And women like to use words to express their ideas while men are inclined to adopt graphs, diagrams and pictures to show their opinions. Since all these differences between men and women, but how gender differences affect memory? And who gets better memory?

Recently, two of my good friends, John and Joan, had a fierce argument about whether men had a better memory or whether women did. Both sides presented their evidences to prove their argument. Based on their evidences, it seems that women have better memory in words or languages and men have better memory in images and diagrams, which coincide with differences of thinking pattern between male and female. Based on a report of English scientists (Memory Differences between Men and Women lying in Jene Difference 12), it argued that the differences between men and women lie in their different way to memorize things and all of these differences were originated from gene differences. Therefore, it can help explain the memory differences between John and Joan, with John memorizing facts of exact route and Joan remembering things related with emotions, like what John said and how she responded.

According to professor Jeus (Memory Differences between Men and Women lying in Jene Difference 12), men and women belonged to a same creature, so it was amazing to find considerable differences in this same creature. But it cannot be denied that men have a pair of X and Y chromosomes but women’s chromosome is composed of double X, which leads to the gene differences between male and female.

Another research from Harward Medical School further proved the differences of men and women in memory. The size of women’s frontal lobe is larger than men’s and frontal lobe controls people’s management ability and problem-solving ability ( Gender Differences in Memory 14). Apart from this, the area of women’s marginal cortex is usually larger than men's, and the function of this area is to manage emotions（Gender Differences in Memory 14). But the region of men’s parietal lobe tends to be larger than women’s and the parietal lobe decides the spacial thinking ability and balance ability（Gender Differences in Memory 14).

These studies manifest us that the memory differences between men and women originate from two elements. One is gene differences and the other is different biological pattern of brain. Nevertheless, how about the differences in the development of memory between men and women?

From the perspective of memory development, men are better at comprehension memory and abstract memory. In terms of their memory of abstract materials, although they depend on the specific entities as a basis during the adolescent period, they become more skilled at abstract generalization than women based on the second signal system after the pubertal growth. As for women, they have better mechanical memory and imaginal memory than men. For example, when reciting a passage, women tend to memorize the passage word by word from the beginning to the end and it is difficult for them to reconstruct the material in a logical way and recite it by this order. This phenomenon is very widespread among girls before the adolescent period. Moreover, women are better at specific imaginary memory so that they can have an exact memory about the specific entities like movements and languages. In a word, unlike men, women are better at memorizing details.

From the perspective of neurology studies, human brain is composed of two parts, namely, left cerebral hemisphere and the right cerebral hemisphere. These two hemispheres control the thinking activities and behaviors. Scientists scanned 428 male volunteers and 521 female volunteers taking use of DTI to study the left and right cerebral hemisphere of these people. Scientists used blue signs to mark the cerebral links of male and orange signs to show the cerebral links of female. The scientific result had a clear difference. To be specific, the cerebral links of female indicated that the left and right cerebral hemispheres of them were closely connected, which explained that women had more social abilities, multi-tasks abilities and relatively better memory, while male’s cerebral links were more separated and independent and the corporations between their left and right cerebral hemispheres were few (Big Differences between Men and Women in Memory 21). This research may prove that women had a better memory than men, but these differences are not so big.

In my opinion, men and women have separate memory abilities but the differences of their memory abilities are not clear. Differences in men’s and women’s memory are due to the different thinking ways which are caused by the genes differences and the different biological cerebral structures of men and women. Therefore, as for the argument of John and Joan, I believe that they both have better memory while their memory focuses are different. As a man, John is better at memorizing things related to space, logic and meaningful memory, but Joan, a woman, presents more outstanding talent in memorizing things related to words, languages and emotions. Therefore, John and Joan should realize that gender differences have a profound influence on the memory. Their evidences that one’s memory is preferable to the other’s are superficial representations. But in fact, the differences between men and women are not counted by abilities but by ways. If they understand these differences between men and women, I believe that it is very difficult for them to argue for who had a better memory.

In real life, we always heard that people were likely to argue whether male or female were more clever. Like the memory differences between men and women, the talent differences between men and women cannot be the evidences to show whether men or women are more clever. These differences in talent are also due to the different biological cerebral structures of men and women. Owing to these differences, men and women are different in different fields showing their talents.

All in all, the difference of gender causes the different presentations of memory. This gender difference includes the gene differences, thinking pattern and the different biological cerebral structures. Due to these substantial differences between men and women, people of different gender show different memory focuses. Men are better at memorizing things in a logical way with the help of diagrams, pictures and graphs because of their excellent spatial and logic abilities while women are likely to remember things related to emotions and details using the mechanical method. That John and Joan can remember different things that the other cannot remember just shows the gender differences that lead to memory differences of themselves.