Krueger Lacy E, Salthouse Timothy A
Department of Psychology and Special Education, Texas A&M University-Commerce, P.O. Box 3011, Commerce, TX 75429, USA.
Pers Individ Dif. 2010 Nov 1;49(7):768-772. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.06.024.
Approximately 2,500 adults (ages 18-97) completed multiple study-test trials of a list of unrelated words. Consistent with past research, females outperformed males in the recall task. To assess whether sex differences in recall performance were attributable to differences in acquiring and/or retaining information, the data were analyzed at the individual item level to distinguish gains (i.e., items not recalled on Trial n that were recalled on Trial n+1) and losses (i.e., items recalled on Trial n that were not recalled on Trial n+1). Being a male, increased age, lower verbal episodic memory ability, and lower vocabulary ability were associated with smaller gains and greater losses. Even when controlling for the influence of other individual difference variables, being a male was still associated with fewer gains across the majority of trials. These results suggest that one factor contributing to sex differences in recall performance are differences in acquiring new items rather than differences in retaining information across trials.
约2500名成年人（年龄在18至97岁之间）完成了一系列无关单词列表的多次学习测试试验。与以往研究一致，在回忆任务中女性的表现优于男性。为了评估回忆表现中的性别差异是否归因于获取和/或保留信息的差异，数据在单个项目层面进行分析，以区分记忆增强（即第n次试验未回忆出但在第n + 1次试验中回忆出的项目）和记忆衰退（即第n次试验回忆出但在第n + 1次试验中未回忆出的项目）。男性、年龄增长、较低的言语情景记忆能力和较低的词汇能力与较小的记忆增强和较大的记忆衰退相关。即使控制了其他个体差异变量的影响，在大多数试验中，男性仍然与较少的记忆增强相关。这些结果表明，导致回忆表现中性别差异的一个因素是获取新项目的差异，而非各次试验中保留信息的差异。
