Larsson Maria, Lövdén Martin, Nilsson Lars-Göran
Department of Psychology, Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2003 Jan;112(1):89-103. doi: 10.1016/s0001-6918(02)00092-6.
We examined recollective experience as a function of sex for olfactory and verbal information. In the first study, men and women studied a set of highly familiar odors with incidental or intentional encoding instructions. In the second study, participants were presented with a number of sentences. At recognition, participants indicated whether their positive response was based on conscious recollection (remembering), a feeling of familiarity (knowing), or guessing. The results indicated that recollection was higher among women than men, and that familiarity-based recognition was equally large across sex for both types of information.The finding that the sex-related experiential difference disappeared when controlling for verbal proficiency suggests that sex-related differences in activating verbal information play an important role for sex differences in recollective experience.
