How gender affects memory

Boys & Girls

Boys & Girls

I showed a board with ten traditional 'girl' items (doll, for example) and 'boy' items (football, for example) to 10 boys and 10 girls in each grade - grades 1 through 5 for ten seconds. After a 15 second waiting period, I asked them to tell me which items they remembered.


The results of my study proved that in some respect the gender of the individual did affect which type of items they remembered. How gender affects memory. Although I found this fascinating as a ten year old, I didn't really think about the further implications of the study. For example, I thought that the results showed something innate about the difference between the sexes, whereas the results were probably greatly affected by the role of society as well.

Our school did not give out prizes at the science fair, and unfortunately not many people visited my booth because differences in gender are not as exciting to first graders as vinegar volcanoes or cookies without sugar in them. I think that the experience did help me grow in my ability to apply the scientific process to problems that I now face in academia and in life.

I think science fairs should continue in schools, but we should encourage children to pursue problems that really matter, and that really interest them. Although baking soda and vinegar volcanoes are exciting, they don't really serve any scientific purpose.

I'm not saying fifth graders need to create Nobel Prize winners, a study on how different nutrients effect plant growth seems suitable for a ten year old. However, I do think they should be pushed to solve problems that have some relevance, and, more importantly, create in them a curiosity to research other questions they might have.

Barry's Response - The whole thing about science is pushing the limits of human knowledgepushing the limits of human knowledge and understanding. We have a pretty good understanding of how baking soda reacts with vinegar and what fluid flowing down a slope looks like.

I vote for any project that demonstrates that the researcher is venturing out into a previously unexplored territory (at least for the individual) and learned something along the way. Thanks for your thoughts.

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Comments for How gender affects memory

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Scientific fairs of scientific knowledge of science
by: Anonymous

I highly agree with your view on science fairs, they should grade you on your effort, hypothesis, and something that can benefit or discover the unknown

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Thanks
by: Anonymous

This helped me a lot : )

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Gender Memory
by: Anonymous

a good article showing how gender affects memory. The picture is also well suited.

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Science exhibition
by: Sameea Salih

This article in its first part intrestingly says the differences in Gender, but he fail to explain how. Anyway his opinion that science fairs at schools has to be promoted obviously catches prominence.

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How gender affects memory
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By reading the article, it was actually difficult to find out how gender affects the memory.

The writer has just expressed his opinion and has not mentioned anything about his finding out.

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Gender
by: Anonymous

Really an interesting article. I like it very much. The image is well suited for this article. It is so impressive.

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Thank you to my research and writing assistants, ChatGPT and WordTune, as well as Wombo and others for the images.

GPT-4, OpenAI's large-scale language generation model (and others provided by Google and Meta), helped generate this text.  As soon as draft language is generated, the author reviews, edits, and revises it to their own liking and is responsible for the content.