One of the most common narratives portrayed in the media consists of the bumbling husband or boyfriend who has forgotten about his partner's birthday, or their one-year anniversary, or even Valentine's Day. He scrambles around frantically in an attempt to disguise his lack of preparedness, lest his partner discover how poor he is at remembering crucial and symbolic milestones. Regardless of whether or not he succeeds, hilarity generally ensues and the stereotype of the careless, insensitive male is further cemented in popular culture. Indeed, the general population does express the belief that women have a better memory than men, and it is tough to say whether this recurring theme in entertainment is a product of this belief, or if it is the influence that has lead to the widespread assumption that women are better at remembering (Knox 1; Loftus et al. 19). In any case, research has shown that this universal notion can only be partially validated; while women are generally superior when it comes to long-term memory and aspects of short-term memory such as multitasking and remembering faces, men excel in other areas that require an equally high short-term memory capacity ("Sex Differences in Memory"; Knox 3; Speck et al. 2583).
Short-term memory (STM) is defined by Revlin as the system that facilitates the successful performance of "moment-to-moment" activities, such as retaining mental shopping lists and remembering phone numbers (119). As implied by its name, STM describes the compartment of the human mind that can only hold so much information—about 7 unrelated items—for approximately 18 seconds at a time (Revlin 120-125). Baddeleyrefers to the mechanical component of STM that is not concerned with storage as "working mem...
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Works Cited
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Knox, Richard, et al. "Short term memory based on gender." Pennsylvania: Penn State University (2007).
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Revlin, Russell. "Short Term Memory and Working Memory." Cognition: theory and practice. New York, NY: Worth Publishers, 2013. 118-149. Print.
Speck, Oliver, et al. "Gender differences in the functional organization of the brain for working memory." Neuroreport 11.11 (2000): 2581-2585.
It is no secret that boys and girls grow up hearing about all of their differences. In Hyde’s article, “The Gender Similarities Hypothesis”, she recognizes the frequency of psychological studies done to prove that males and females are very different. It is a common belief that males and females have more mental differences than similarities. As Hyde’s article explains, this seems to be untrue. In fact, it is the opposite that Hyde finds true. She claims that males and females are almost completely psychologically the same, with only a few differences. In her article, she compares meta-analyses of different functions such as math computation, special perception, helping behavior, and more. She found that the vast majority of these experiments showed small differences between the abilities of males versus those of
Atkinson, R.C. & Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). Human memory: A proposed system and its control process.
This essay addresses the working memory model which was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974 in Smith & Kosslyn, 2007) as a response to Atkinson and Shiffrins (1968 in Smith, 2007) multi-store model. According to Baddely and Hitch the multi-store model failed to explain most of the complexities of the human memory and viewed it as being too simplistic. They argued that the short term memory store must have more components rather it being a single inflexible store as suggested previously by Atkinson and Shiffrin (1968). The working memory model is therefore an enhancement of the multi store model. According to Baddeley and Hitch working memory is a limited- capacity system that stores and processes information.
Preston, A. (2007, Sep 26). How does short-term memory work in relation to long-term memory? Are short-term daily memories somehow transferred to long-term storage while we
Lewis, Tanya. "How Men's Brains Are Wired Differently than Women's." Scientific American Global RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
Bjork, R. A., & Whitten, W. B. (1974). Recency-Sensitive Retrieval Processes in Long-Term Free Recall. Cognitive Psychology, 173–89.
Research studies established by Herlitz, Nilsson, and Backman prove that sex differences favor women when it comes to episodic memory. In this research experiment these psychologists took about 1,000 applicants, both male and female, between ages of 35 – 80, and asked them to remember a list of words; the study showed that women outperformed men by 25 percent. Coming to the conclusion that, since women were able to recall more words than men they evidently had the better episodic memory. Furthermore this article expands upon this subcategory of memory by describing the two types of tasks involved with it: verbal-production ta... ...
Farrants, J. (1998, September). The 'false' memory debate. Counseling Psychology Quarterly. Retrieved September 14, 2000 from ProQuest database (Bell & Howell Information and Learning-ProQuest) on the World Wide Web: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb
Fausto-Sterling, A. (1993, April) The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough Retrieved from http://moodle.csun.edu
Dr. John Nicholson, author of "A Question of Sex", states that men and women are different in the types of mental tasks they perform (120). Times magazine states in an article published in January 1992, that "Males excel at rotating three-dimensional objects in their head. Females prove better at reading the emotions of people in photographs" (121). The author of the article is referring to the fact that maybe our brains are put together differently.
In the article entitled How Men's Brains Are Wired Differently Than Women's, Tanya Lewis suggests that males and females share two very distinct structures in the brain region. It is not surprising that males and females function under two biological roles in the society, but it has been proven that the brain has a rather significant involvement in this. This article introduces physiological as well as anatomical ways in which the brain of a male differs from that of a female. While I agree with Tanya Lewis’ claims, the articles does not address how gender roles and personalities can be a result of differences in the brain structures of males and females. This reflection will gather valid studies that proves that, indeed, the differences in character and personality traits of males versus
J., & Banich, M. T. (2003). Memory. In M. T. Banich (Ed.), Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropsychology (pp. 322-364). Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.
Stern, L. D., Marrs, S., Millar, M.G. & Cole, E. (1984). Processing Time and th Recall of Inconsistent and Consistent Behviors of Individuals and Groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 253-262.
According to Sternberg (1999), memory is the extraction of past experiences for information to be used in the present. The retrieval of memory is essential in every aspect of daily life, whether it is for academics, work or social purposes. However, many often take memory for granted and assume that it can be relied on because of how realistic it appears in the mind. This form of memory is also known as flashbulb memory. (Brown and Kulik, 1977). The question of whether our memory is reliably accurate has been shown to have implications in providing precise details of past events. (The British Psychological Association, 2011). In this essay, I would put forth arguments that human memory, in fact, is not completely reliable in providing accurate depictions of our past experiences. Evidence can be seen in the following two studies that support these arguments by examining episodic memory in humans. The first study is by Loftus and Pickrell (1995) who found that memory can be modified by suggestions. The second study is by Naveh-Benjamin and Craik (1995) who found that there is a predisposition for memory to decline with increasing age.
Sabbatini, R. (n.d.). Are There Differences between the Brains of Males and Females?. "Brain & Mind" Magazine - WWW Home Page. Retrieved April 14, 2011, from http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n11/mente/eisntein/cerebro-homens.html