Sex differences in episodic memory: The impact of verbal and visuospatial ability.

Herlitz, Agneta; Airaksinen, Eija; Nordström, Erik

doi:10.1037/0894-4105.13.4.590

Cited by 158 publications

(119 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…1). Such results converge with previous findings that have shown better performance for females in episodic memory tasks (Herlitz et al, 1999;Herlitz & Yonker, 2002). Although this benefit was observed for both age groups, the benefit in memory performance for females over males was more consistently observed in the older adult sample.…”

Section: Itemsupporting

confidence: 69%

“…Previous studies with young and older adults suggested a benefit for women in verbal episodic memory, as well as a comparable benefit for men in the visuospatial domain (see Herlitz, Airaksinen, & Nordstrom, 1999;Herlitz, Nilsson, & Backman, 1997;Herlitz & Rehnman, 2008;Lewin et al 2001). The memory benefit for verbal materials observed in women over men was confirmed in a study by Herlitz and Yonker (2002), who tested young adult men and women in a series of tasks involving the recall and recognition of verbal material, faces, and abstract pictorial stimuli.…”

Section: Gender Differences In Episodic Memorymentioning

confidence: 54%

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The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

et al. 2011

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In this study we assessed the potential moderating roles of stimulus type (emotionally arousing) and participants' characteristics (gender) in older adults' associative memory deficit. In two experiments, young and older participants studied lists that included neutral and emotionally arousing word pairs (positive and negative) and completed recognition tests for the words and their associations. In Experiment 1, the majority of the word pairs were composed of two nouns, whereas in Experiment 2 they were composed of adjective-noun pairs. The results extend evidence for older adults' associative deficit and suggest that older and younger adults' item memory is improved for emotionally arousing words. However, associative memory for the word pairs did not benefit (and even showed a slight decline) from emotionally arousing words, which was the case for both younger and older adults. In addition, in these experiments, gender appeared to moderate the associative deficit of older adults, with older males but not females demonstrating this deficit.Keywords Aging . Episodic memory . Associative memory . Gender . ArousalOne issue that continues to pervade aging research is the problem of fully explaining why episodic memory declines across the lifespan. It is essential to understand the nature of this decline in order to help older adults maintain functionality throughout their lives. Previous work has suggested a number of contributing factors to this episodic memory decline, including deficits in semantic processing, metamemory, and deliberate recollection (see Light, 1991). Other theories have suggested that episodic memory problems may be the result of global declines in functions such as processing speed (Salthouse, 1996), attentional resources (Craik, 1983(Craik, , 1986, or inhibitory control (Hasher & Zacks, 1988) that have broader consequences for cognition.Of particular interest in the present study is the reduced ability in later adulthood to properly bind and associate items at encoding and to retrieve those associations at a later time, suggested as one potential mechanism underlying age-related episodic memory decline (e.g., Chalfonte & Johnson, 1996;Naveh-Benjamin, 2000;Old & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008a). The aims of the present study were to assess the effect of emotional arousal on the associative-binding deficit of older adults and to consider potential gender differences that may exist in older adults' associative memory. Each of these issues will be addressed in turn. Associative-binding deficit and episodic memory in agingChalfonte and Johnson (1996) investigated memory for complex events and their individual features in young and older adults. Their results showed a disproportionate decline in the older adult group for memories involving the binding of stimulus features (a picture, its color, and its location) relative to the decline in memory for each separate feature. This finding is in line with Naveh-Benjamin's (2000) associative-deficit hypothesis, which claims that a central factor in episo...

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Section: Itemsupporting

confidence: 69%

Section: Gender Differences In Episodic Memorymentioning

confidence: 54%

The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

et al. 2011

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“…Previous research has shown that there is a clear dissociation between episodic and semantic memory in relation to different variables, such as gender (e.g., Herlitz et al, 1997Herlitz et al, , 1999, age (e.g., Nilsson et al, 1997;Nyberg et al, 2003), genetic factors , and marital status (Mousavi-Nasab, Kormi-Nouri, Sundström, Nilsson, 2012). In general, 8 episodic memory has been found to be more affected by these variables than semantic memory.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Examination of the bidirectional influences of leisure activity and memory in old people: A dissociative effect on episodic memory

Nasab

Kormi-Nouri

Nilsson

2013

British J of Psychology

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The present study examined the relationships between different types of social and cognitive activities and different types of episodic and semantic memory. A total of 794 adult men and women from five age cohorts (aged 65-85 at baseline), participating in the longitudinal Betula project on aging, memory, and health, were included in the study. The participants were studied over 10 years (1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) in threes waves. Recognition and recall were used as episodic memory tasks, and knowledge and verbal fluency as semantic memory tasks. The results, after controlling for age, gender, education and some diseases, including heart disease and hypertension, as covariates, showed unidirectional effects of social activity on episodic memory on all test occasions (β = .10). Also, episodic memory predicted change in cognitive activity for all test waves (β = .21-.22). Findings suggest that social activity can be seen as protective factor against memory decline. It also seems that episodic memory performance is a predictor of cognitive activity in old people. However, the opposite direction does not hold true.

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“…After excluding this outlier, SPSS was used to conduct group (2) by sex (2) by retrieval task type (3) repeated-measures ANOVA to examine accuracy (significance threshold ϭ p Ͻ 0.05). Sex was included as a covariate in the analysis as previous studies have reported better spatial memory performance in men (Herlitz et al, 1999;Nyberg et al, 2000c;Lewin et al, 2001). Post hoc between-group one-way ANOVAs were conducted to clarify the 2-by-3 ANOVA results.…”

Section: Behavioral Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Age-Related Changes in Right Middle Frontal Gyrus Volume Correlate with Altered Episodic Retrieval Activity

Rajah¹,

Languay²,

Grady³

2011

J. Neurosci.

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Age-related deficits in episodic retrieval have been associated with volume reductions in the middle frontal gyrus (MFG). However, it remains unclear how this age-related reduction in MFG volume correlates with neural activity during retrieval. To address this, we conducted in vivo volumetry of the frontal cortex in young and older human adults and found more volume loss on the right than on the left MFG with age. We then examined how left and right MFG volume correlated with fMRI activity during successful retrieval of item, spatial context, and temporal context information in both age groups. In young adults, larger right MFG volume was positively correlated with greater activity in a commonly found episodic retrieval network that included bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral inferior parietal cortex. Within this network, left DLPFC and right inferior parietal cortex activity predicted memory performance. In older adults, a positive structure-function association in DLPFC for either left or right MFG/DLPFC was not observed. Instead, right MFG volume was negatively correlated with activity in several regions in older adults, including the parahippocampal cortex (PHC) and anterior cingulate. Less activity in the PHC region predicted better item memory, and less activity in the anterior cingulate predicted better spatial context accuracy in older adults. We conclude that age-related change in the structure-function association in MFG/DLPFC impacts retrieval activity and performance, and those older adults with larger right MFG volume attempt to compensate for this change by modifying activity in other brain regions to help retrieval performance.

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Sex differences in episodic memory: The impact of verbal and visuospatial ability.

Cited by 158 publications

References 44 publications

The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

The effects of emotional arousal and gender on the associative memory deficit of older adults

Examination of the bidirectional influences of leisure activity and memory in old people: A dissociative effect on episodic memory

Age-Related Changes in Right Middle Frontal Gyrus Volume Correlate with Altered Episodic Retrieval Activity

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