Sex differences favoring women in verbal but not in visuospatial episodic memory.

Abstract

Sex differences favoring women have been found in a number of studies of episodic memory. This study examined sex differences in verbal, nonverbal, and visuospatial episodic memory tasks. Results showed that although women performed at a higher level on a composite verbal and nonverbal episodic memory score, men performed at a higher level on a composite score of episodic memory tasks requiring visuospatial processing. Thus, men can use their superior visuospatial abilities to excel in highly visuospatial episodic memory tasks, whereas women seem to excel in episodic memory tasks in which a verbalization of the material is possible.