Does gender affect short term memory? The debate over whether there really is any difference between men and women when it comes to our brains has raged for some time. While there are similarities, science has been uncovering some real differences as well. The question is do those difference apply to memory?

If there are any gender short term memory differences it may come down to a discussion in both brain function and brain construction variances between the two sexes. Many of the recent studies done show that men and women do indeed process things in different ways and with different parts of their brains. Some of this has been linked to the effect reproductive hormones like Testosterone and Estrogen have on brain development. It seems that these hormones have different effects on how brain cells are created and function.

Additionally, researchers have discovered that men tend to have a greater number of neurons in the outer brain than women do, while women tend to have more of the material between neurons that are involved in the connections and processes that communicate between neurons. While this may not be directly related to memory ability during a person's lifetime, it seems to make a difference in how age related issues like dementia affect the person.

Since dementia affects a person by essentially killing off neurons, the difference in neuron quantity between the sexes could explain why dementia related issues tend to more severely affect women then men. The fact that men have more neurons to spare could mean that diseases which kill off neurons at roughly the same rate between men and women would impact women to a greater extent because the operations of the brain are shared between fewer cells and the loss of those cells would therefore impact brain function more. More work needs to be done in this area.

Some other studies on how does gender affect short term memory seem to indicate that women have slightly better ability then men when it comes to using short term memory to recall facts and words. Women often score higher then men on verbal tests so it is not completely surprising that they might have better word and fact memory on average. Conversely, men seemed to be better at spatial and function oriented memory tasks then women. So it seems that part of the answer to memory differences boils down to what is it that the person is being asked to remember.

Gender short term memory differences also seemed to be impacted by the "genderness" of what is the subject of memory. As common sense might tells us and some studies have observed, men and women tend to have better recall of items that have general appeal to that particular sex and less recall if the item seemed to apply to the other gender. This is most likely a result of concentration and time than it is due to biology. People tend to remember better the things that interest them and with which they spend a greater amount of time considering.

So the question of how does gender affect short term memory seems to be more complicated than a yes or no answer. Science has identified some real differences both in function and in biology for the brains of each sex. It also seems that since each sex has different perspectives and interests that those things which are the focus of a particular gender also impact how memory is used.