“He forgot about our anniversary!” And not only about her: most of the romantic stories about relationships are told by girls. At the same time, men remember a couple of facts from the strength – or they cannot remember anything at all. Why?
Women store memories – especially autobiographical ones – better than men. As a rule, women recall events from the past faster and reproduce more details of what happened. Psychologists Azriel Grisman and Judith Hudson (USA) found an explanation for this: the thing is that parents talk differently to their male and female children during the period when they acquire memory skills*.
Memory is not a “box” hidden in the depths of the brain, into which memories are folded. Asriel Grisman, who studies gender and memory at Hamilton College, says: “Memory is a mental activity, and the more memory entry points there are, the more likely information is to stay in memory.” What are these “entry points”? They can be emotions, smells, even what you were wearing when a certain event happened. All these and similar factors are fixed in the memory – and subsequently help to remember the events that took place a long time ago. And, according to research, since childhood, more such “entry points” are created in women.
Read more:
- Why are girls not like boys?
Between the ages of 2 and 6, we learn to form memories. And this happens, including during conversations with our parents. Children learn from adults to present information and tell stories. For example, when a mother asks a child to tell in detail about the events of the past day and asks clarifying questions, she thereby subconsciously suggests which details are important to remember. This habit of retelling details helps the memory to solidify memories. A study done with preschool children found that children whose mothers asked them to tell stories with lots of detail were then able to recall those early memories in more detail than children whose mothers did not insist on a detailed story**.
But the manner in which parents communicate with their sons or daughters is different. Mothers tend to mention a lot of vivid details and ask to describe emotions – that is, they create “entry points” – in communication more often with daughters than with sons. Parents may not even be aware of such gender differences in communication, but most often they set the mood for repetition – and, therefore, better memorization – for girls. Asriel Grisman explains that parents’ interactions with girls involve more information and have more intense emotional “reinforcement.” For boys, emotions are associated only with significant events or upheavals. Thus, in girls, the brain from childhood gets more opportunities to remember information in detail, which allows women to successfully develop long-term memory ***.
* A. Grysman, Judith A. Hudson «Gender differences in autobiographical memory: Development and methodological considerations», Developmental Review, September 2013.
** F. Jack et al. «Maternal reminiscing style during early childhood predicts the age of adolescents’ earliest memories», Child Development Journal, April 2009.
*** M. Dahl «Why men never remember anything», Science of Us, September 2014.