The role of attentional resources in explaining sex differences in object location memory

Abstract

Sex differences in object location memory have been widely studied, with mixed results. The role of attention in mediating the female advantage in object location memory has not been clearly understood yet. Two experiments, involving 181 participants and using an actual object array, were conducted in the present study to examine two learning conditions: incidental and intentional. In each experiment, participants were randomly assigned to divided versus full attention conditions. The study also examined memorizing location-maintained and location-exchanged objects. In both experiments, in both incidental and intentional learning conditions, women outperformed men in memorizing location-exchanged objects in the full but not in the divided attention condition. These findings confirm and extend previous ones concerning the conditions under which the female advantage in the detection of change in an array of objects occurs. The findings are discussed within an evolutionary conceptual framework.

Effects of attention during encoding on sex differences in object location memory

“…In this study, women retained memory performance even when performing a parallel task that was presumed to compete for attentional resources. The current results contradict previous attempt to establish female superiority in object location memory under divided attention condition (Barel, ). However, the current study differs from the previous one in two ways: first, the presentation of physical object array versus an array presented on paper, and second, the use of an arithmetic task versus tone discrimination as a distraction task in the former versus the present study, respectively.…”

“…Furthermore, studies differed in other task characteristics, recognition of location‐exchanged (the number of correct detection of objects exchanging locations) and location‐maintained (the number of correct detection of objects maintaining locations). Honda and Nihei () and Barel () shown that female advantage was observed only in memorising location‐exchanged objects.…”

“…Although women outperformed men in some memory tasks (verbal memory, face recognition; Secer & Yilmazogullari, ), the role of attention in this difference has not been fully proven (Herlitz et al, ; Palmer et al, ; Secer & Yilmazogullari, ). One study directly addressed the role of attention in sex differences in object location memory (Barel, ). Two experiments were conducted using an actual object array, the first with incidental encoding and the second with intentional encoding.…”

“…Because attentional resources are crucial for memory tasks, the present study explored sex differences in two experiments: the first includes an object location memory task with incidental encoding under one of two conditions: divided or full attention ; the second resembles the first, except that all participants engaged in intentional encoding . To the best of my knowledge, only one previous study has addressed the role of attention in sex differences in object location memory (Barel, ). The present study differs from the former in several respects.…”

“…The present study differs from the former in several respects. First, the nature of the distraction task selected; the present study used a tone pitch discrimination as a distractor whereas the previous study used an arithmetic task (Barel, ). It was assumed that the distraction task used in the present study would not dilute the participants' attentional resources given the nonverbal nature of the task.…”