Study Finds that Women are Better than Men at Remembering Words

VIVA – A new study finds that women are better than men at finding and remembering words. Researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway have analyzed the results of 168 studies on gender differences in 'Verbal Fluency' and 'Verbal-Episodic Memory'.

Verbal fluency is a measure of one's vocabulary, while verbal-episodic memory is the ability to recall words one has come across in the past.

'Women are better. The female advantage is consistent across time and life span, but it is also relatively small,' Professor Marco Hirnstein stated, as quoted from the Daily Mail site, Tuesday, October 18, 2022.

Marco Hirnstein adds that most intellectual abilities show no difference in average performance between men and women. But women are better at some tasks, and so are men better at others.

"So far, the focus has been mostly on abilities in which men excel. However, in recent years the focus has shifted more towards women," Marco Hirnstein added.

Before their study, the last literature analysis examining gender differences in verbal fluency and memory was conducted in 1988.

However, at that time, it was found that women got smaller results. Hirnstein and his colleagues wanted the results and found the magnitude of the current difference.

They performed a 'meta-analysis' of the combined data of all Ph.D. theses, master theses, and studies published in scientific journals they could find.

It encompassed data from more than 350,000 participants taken over the last 50 years. The researchers also looked at how the studies' results related to the gender of the first or last author, publication year, and the ages of the participants.

Results published in Perspectives on Psychological Science found small but consistent gains for these women in verbal fluency and verbal memory.