Which area of verbal ability is an exception to the typical female advantage?

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• Learning in the navigational space: Age differences in a short-term memory for objects task

  2016, Learning and Individual Differences

  The ARSM task required immediate recall of visuospatial information presented in the navigational space for a brief period of time, whereas the VSRD (as a delayed spatial task for items presented in the near space) involved an effort of a static observer to keep in mind spatial items for a longer period of time. Some studies suggest that females may benefit from verbal strategies during the learning phase that would result in a more successful encoding (Alexander, Packard, & Peterson, 2002; Chipman & Kimura, 1998; Eals & Silverman, 1994). However, female superiority was rarely observed in tasks that involved navigation (Coluccia & Louse, 2004; Saucier, Lisoway, Green, & Elias, 2007).

• Gender differences in the recognition of spatially transformed figures: Behavioral data and event-related potentials (ERPs)

  2012, Neuroscience Letters

  Presumably, this measuring system is more effective in males than in females, and results in an early detection of structural changes of objects. In turn, in the object-constructive task, females are more efficient when using the working memory component [4,10]. In summary, we have found out the gender-related differences at the early stage of visuo-spatial processing and a remarkable sensitivity of the parietal P1 peak amplitude in males only to the object structure changes, namely to the rotation of object details.

• Sex differences in episodic memory among children with intractable epilepsy

  2009, Epilepsy and Behavior

  Research on sex differences in episodic memory is extensive, and where differences have been found, they indicate that women show an advantage in verbal memory, memory for object locations, and face recognition [1–3,7], whereas men show an advantage in visuospatial memory. Verbal memory tasks on which women excel include word recall and recognition [4–6], object recall [7], and story recall [8]. Although it has been hypothesized that this sex difference may be due to the female advantage in verbal abilities, rather than to a true advantage in verbal episodic memory [9], it has been demonstrated that the effect for verbal memory is obtained even when verbal ability is statistically controlled [10].

• What grabs his attention but not hers? Estrogen correlates with neurophysiological measures of vocal change detection

  2008, Psychoneuroendocrinology

  Furthermore, a large number of behavioral studies found better verbal memory in women than in men (for a review see Kimura, 1999). Interestingly, the female memory advantage appears to be specific to intentional stimulus encoding, but does not show up if men and women are tested for incidental encoding (Chipman and Kimura, 1998). In line with the present results, this suggests that maintenance of attentional focus on the primary task is driving the observed sex effects.

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