Gender Affects Memory

Relying in our memory is essential for everyday use. Researchers do remember things which are executed and otherwise the things which researchers will do. Although it is thought that men and women think and remember differently, there will always be a reason where they will meet in expected similarities in their own memory. As researchers go on, researchers will visualize those reasons, why and how does gender affects the memory. Gender identity, the internalized sense of being neither male nor female, is a central aspect of personality. It gives rise to the behavior that is being processed into the brain until it become memory that society needs in order to understand what would be its impact on them. Our memories give researchers the ability to store a remarkable amount of information about the past, and it can play tricks on researchers too. At other times, however, as the goal of equality between men and women now grows closer. Researchers are also losing our awareness of important differences. The world is less interesting when everything is the same. It is our position that men and women are equal but different.

When researchers pay equal, researchers mean that men and women have a right to equal opportunity. The psychological differences between man and women are less obvious but generally researchers are curious about the things which they differ through the use of our memory. Recognizing, understanding, discussing, as well as acting skillfully in light of the difference between men and women can be difficult. Today’s society has taught researchers and has imposed on researchers the expectation that men and women should live together continuously in communion and in harmony. Those expectations are not only unrealistic but ultimately they have people feeling unloved inadequate, cynical, apathetical or ashamed. The challenge facing men and women is to become aware of their identities, to accept their differences most especially in memory, and to live their lives fully and as skillfully as possible. To do this, researchers must first understand in what ways they differ. Researchers must avoid trying to change others to suit our needs. The following illustrates some important differences between men and women. These differences are not absolute. They describe how men and women are in most situations most of the time. So lastly, researchers will come up effectively through the deep explanation of memory itself, its subcomponent and most especially the effects of gender in memory.

Statement of the Problem

This study is aimed to find out what are the effects of gender in memory. Specifically, it seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What is memory?
2. What are the Types of Gender?
3. What are the effects of Gender in Memory?

Significance of the Study

This study will further explain the advantage to the following readers.

Researchers.This study enables the researches to identify what are the effects of gender in memory that enable them to see some clarifications and to visualize their mental situations as a male and a female.

Female/ Male.This study increases the awareness of every male and female of the society due to their mental differences in terms of memory. Thus, through this study, every male and female can attain their privilege to know what are their advantage and disadvantages in terms of memory. They may learn and discover the things which they had never encountered before.

Future Researchers.This study will give baseline data in conducting and making significant and common studies in the near future.

Definition of Terms
For clarify and better understanding of the study, the following terms are hereby defined by the researchers. 1. Corpus Callosum- The great band of commissural fibers uniting the cerebral hemispheres of higher mammals including humans. 2. Gray Matter- Neural tissue especially of the brain and spinal cord that contains nerve- cell bodies as well as nerve fibers and has a brownish- gray color. 3. White Matter- Neural Tissue especially of the brain and spinal cord that consists largely of myelinated nerve fibers bundled into tracts, has a whitish color, and typically underlies the cortical gray matter.

4. Corpus Callosum- The corpus callosum is a thick band of nerve fibers that divides the cerebrum into left and right hemispheres. It connects the left and right sides of the brain allowing for communication between both hemispheres. The corpus callosum transfers motor, sensory, and cognitive information between the brain hemispheres. 5. Amygdala- The amygdala is an almond shaped mass of nuclei located deep within the temporal lobe of the brain. It is a limbic system structure that is involved in many of our emotions and motivations, particularly those that are related to survival. The amygdala is involved in the processing of emotions such as fear, anger and pleasure. The amygdala is also responsible for determining what memories are stored and where the memories are stored in the brain. It is thought that this determination is based on how huge an emotional response an event invokes.

Body
When it comes to memory there are some effects that are being processed between the male and female. So, it comes to a point that both of them are curious about how and why the memory affects gender. According to some psychologist, The Sensory Memory is the earliest stage in memory. During this stage, sensory information from the environment is stored for a very brief period of time, generally for no longer than a half- second for visual information and three or four seconds for auditory information. We attend to only certain aspects of this sensory memory, allowing of some of this information to pass. Into the next stage- short term memory. Short term memory which is also known as active memory, is where the information that we are currently aware of and thinking about. Paying attention to sensory memories generates the information in short term memories. Most of the information stored in active memory will be kept approximately twenty to thirty seconds. While many of our short term memories are quickly forgotten, attending to this information allows it to continue on the next stages long- term memory.Long- term memory which refers to the continuing storage of information is largely outside of our awareness, but can be called into working memory to be used when needed.

Some of this information is fairly easy to recall, while other memories are much more difficult to access.These types of memory has something to do with why and how a male and a female process memory differently. Women had better long term- episodic memory. These are the types of memories such as events. Women tend to remember events based on verbal clues, whether written or spoken. Women would also be more likely to remember parties and function associated with emotion such as birthday, wedding anniversaries and details about the world around them. On the other hand, men had better long- term semantic memory. These are types of memories such as events. Men tend to remember events based on visual clues. This means men are better at remembering things associated with pictures and images. Men would also be more likely to remember functions associated with tactics such as travelling, direction, and trivia. One example is a man would be more likely to remember his way out of the forest than of a woman. In terms of brain, male and female are also different. In Women, brain scans have shown that their frontal lobes (responsible for problem- solving and decision making) and limbic cortices (regulate emotion) were larger.

The limbic cortex is also the area of the brain that processes language, making women more verbal, in general. Women have neurons that are more tightly packed, allowing faster communications to be made. This might explain why women tend to remember things better than men. The connections they make are much more complex and sophisticated. Women also have more white matter in their brains, which contribute to the connections that are made. This would explain why women are generally better at multi- tasking than men. The complex connections allow them to think of and do things simultaneously. In addition, the female brain has larger corpus callosum, which is bundle of nerves that connects emotion and cognition. As a result, women are better with language abilities rely more heavily on oral or verbal communication. Whereas, men, in general, have slightly larger brains than women. For men, their parietal cortices (in charge of space perception), and amygdala’s (regulate sexual and social behavior) are larger. This might explain why visual- spatial tasks are easier for men. Men also have more gray matter in their brains, which is full of active neurons.

This might explain why there are more men in physically or mentally active professions like airplane pilots, bush guides, race car drivers, and mathematicians. Men tend to be more systematic in thinking. In terms of task, a number of women seem to be able to use both sides for language because a woman’s brain has a larger corpus callosum, which means women can transfer data between the right and left hemispheres faster than men. This gives them a distinct advantage. If a woman has a stroke in the left- front side of the brain, she may still retain some language from the right front- side. The female brain is more diffused and utilizes significant portions at both hemispheres for a variety of tasks while Males favor a single brain half. For men, language is most often just in the dominant hemisphere (usually the left side). Men’s brain tends to perform tasks predominantly with the left side, which is the logical/ rational side of the brain. The male brain is highly specialized, using specific parts of one hemisphere or the other to accomplish specific tasks. According to Richard Gray, a science correspondent, when it comes to memory it is clear that men and women are simply not on the same wavelength.

While man may fail to match a woman’s ability to remember the date of an anniversary, they are better at storing a seemingly endless cache of facts and figures. Scientists believe they have now uncovered the reason for this difference between the sexes- they make the memories in different ways. Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College London, have found that males use different genes from females when making the new connections in the brain that are needed to create long- term memories. They believe this might explain why men are far better at remembering “tactical” memories, such as travel directions and trivia, while women from more “emotional” memories such as birthdays, wedding anniversaries, and details about the world around them. Women have an enhanced ability to recall memories that have strong emotional components. They can also recall events or experiences that have similar emotions in common. Women are very adept at recalling information, events or experiences in which there is common emotional theme. Men tend to recall events using strategies that rely on reconstructing the experience in terms of elements, tasks, or activities that took place.

Emotion- memory interactions occur at various stages of information processing, from the initial encoding and consolidation of memory traces to their long term retrieval. Recent advances are revealing new insights into the reactivation of latent emotional associations and the recollection of personal episodes from the remote past. There is evidence to suggest that a great deal of the sensitivity that exists within men and women has a physiological basis. It has been observed that in many cases, women have an enhanced physical alarm response to danger or threat. At the heart of sensitivity is our capacity to from, appreciate and maintain relationships that are rewarding. Even here, there are important differences. For men, what demonstrates a solid relationship is quite different from that of most women. Men feel close and validated through shared activities. Men and women approach problems with similar goals but with different considerations. While men and women are solving problems equally well, their process is quite different. For most women, sharing and discussing a problem presents an opportunity to explore, deepen, or strengthen the relationship with the person they are talking with.

Women are usually more concerned about how problems are solving that merely solving the problem itself. For women, solving the problem can profoundly impact whether they feel closer and less alone or whether they feel distant and less connected. The process of solving a problem can strengthen or weaken a relationship. Most men are less concerned and do not feel the same as women when solving a problem. Men approach problems in a very different manner than woman. For most men, solving a problem presents an opportunity to demonstrate their competence; their strength of resolve, and their commitment into a relationship. How the problem is solved is not nearly as important as solving it effectively and in the best possible manner. Men have tendency to dominate and to assume authority in a problem solving process. They set aside their feelings provided the dominance hierarchy was agreed upon in advance and respected. They are often distracted and do not attend well to quality of the relationship while solving the problems. Professor Carey Cooper, a psychologist who specializes in sex differences at Lancaster University, said “it is probably a combination of the genetics and hard wiring of the brain together with the social inspiring of gender that has led to the behavioral differences we now see between men and women”. Gender affects the memory through some environmental factors like the task of relationship facing men and women.

The task is to accept their differences, avoid taking the differences as personal attempts to frustrate each other, and to compromise whenever possible.The idea that one gender can think and feel like the other if they truly loved each other is rather absorb. Sure, a man and a woman could act in consideration of the other needs, but this would not necessarily be awarding and honest. Holding the benefit of another above our own is rewarding. But from time to time and more often for most of us, it is important to be our self and to be accepted, and not to be the source of distress and disappointments in the lives of people you love. Environmental factors, such as education, seem to influence the magnitude of these sex differences, as well. While the probability of genetically based differences between the quality of male and female memory remains unknown, the results suggest that females currently hold the advantage in episodic memory. In additional studies, psychologist also discovered that women perform better than men in task requiring little to no verbal processing such as recognition of familiar odors, and that the female episodic memory advantages increase when women utilize verbal abilities and decreases when abilities are required.

Conclusion

It is important to know why and how gender affects memory so that we may understand the differences between a male memory and a female memory. It is true that they have a lot of differences because the way of processing these memories are also different between the two genders. There are also many factors which are reasons behind those differences such as brain size, task, emotion, understanding, and environmental factors. Although there are times wherein one gender dominates the other, we are not saying that male has superior memory than female or female have superior memory than men. Our study shows that there are times where men show better memory than women and there are also times where woman shows better memory than men. The researchers therefore conclude that each gender has his/ her advantage when it comes to his/ her memory.