Did your husband forget something in the grocery list you gave him?
Cut him some slack for not being able to remember some things in his weekly tasks. Science proves that it is not entirely his fault.
A research involving 100 men and women proved that women are better in remembering things compared to men.
The study conducted by Italian and British researchers used a battery of memory tests to assess their prospective memory. As expected, the results of the study revealed that volunteers, who were aged between 15 and 40, tend to have difficulty in remembering as they get older.
The surprising aspect of the study’s findings revealed a difference in terms of gender.
Women volunteers were better at remembering tasks linked to events compared to a specific time. Moreover, they excelled in remembering plans that involved executions rather than saying.
Although researchers are still unsure why such difference exists, they believe that it has something to do with the woman’s ability to juggle working life and house responsibilities.
Dr. Liana Palermo, a researcher Birmingham’s Aston University explained her hypothesis in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology.
“An alternative hypothesis is that the sex differences we found could be due to the care-taking role often assumed by women and the fact that in addition to work responsibilities, women also have more responsibilities at home.”
“As a consequence of this social role, in daily life women might perform tasks involving prospective memory more than men, enhancing their performance in remembering to remember,” Dr. Palermo wrote.
Dr. Palermo suggests to give men more responsibilities at home to give their memory a boost.
Aside from the women’s role at home and outside home, Dr. Palermo thinks the gender difference can be linked to the brain structure or hormones of men and women. In addition, other studies have shown that men’s brain memory hub shrinks, but remains the same in women between the ages 20 to 40.
