Sex differences in cognition

The most basic of these abilities are memory, executive function, processing speed and perception, which combine to form a larger perceptual umbrella relating to different social, affective, verbal and spatial information.

For example, a study conducted by Lowe, Mayfield, and Reynolds (2003) examined sex differences among children and adolescents on various short-term memory measures.

A 2004 study published in the journal of Applied Cognitive Psychology found significantly higher male performance on four visuo-spatial working memory.

[5] Similarly another study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping found no sex differences in a verbal n-back working memory task among adults from ages 18–58 years old.

[6] There was also no sex differences in verbal working memory among a study of university students published in the Journal of Dental and Medical Sciences.

[18] A review published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science by researcher Agneta Herlitz also conclude that higher ability in women on episodic-memory tasks requiring both verbal and visuospatial episodic memory and on face-recognition tasks, while men have higher abilities for episodic memory, where visual-spatial skills of high complexity are required.

[28] 2012–2014 studies published in the Journal of Neuropsychology with a sample size ranging from 3500 to 9138 participants by researcher Ruben C Gur found higher female attention accuracy in a neurocognitive battery assessing individuals from ages 8–21.

[33] The study also analyzed past literature and found higher female performance in withholding social behavior such as aggressive responses and improper sexual arousal.

[33] In another study published in 2011 in the journal Brain and Cognition, it was found that females outperformed males on the Sustained Attention to Response Task which is a test that measures inhibitory control.

For example, a 2006 study published in Intelligence by researcher Stephen Camarata and Richard Woodcock found faster processing speed in females across all age groups in a sample of 4,213 participants.

[35] This was followed by another study published in 2008 by researchers Timothy Z Keith and Matthew R. Reynolds who found faster processing speed in females from ages 6 to 89 years old.

[38][39] Another study of young adults in three cultures showed significant sex differences in semantic perception (attribution of meaning) of most common and abstract words.

[42][44][45] Another 2013 meta-analysis published in the journal Educational Review found greater male mental rotation in a deviation of 0.57 which only grew larger as time limits were added.

[47] It also manifests and largely mediates higher male performance in arithmetic and computational fluency[48] All of these math and technical fields involve spatial abilities such as rotation and manipulation of imagined space, symbols and objects.

[7] Sex differences in mental rotation also reaches almost a single deviation (1.0) when the tasks require navigation, as found in one study with participants who used Oculus Rift in a virtual environment.

[63][64] It has also been found that the hormone estrogen increases ability of speech production and phonological processing in women, which could be tied to their advantages in these areas.

[65][66] Researchers Joseph M. Andreano and Larry Cahill have also found that the female verbal advantage extends into numerous tasks, including tests of spatial and autobiographical abilities.

A 2012 review published in the journal Neuropsychologia found that women are better at recognizing facial effects, expression processing and emotions in general.

[68] A 2012 study published in the journal Neuropsychology with a sample of 3,500 individuals from ages 8–21, found that females outperformed males on face memory and all social cognition tests.

[70] Other studies have also indicated greater female superiority to discriminate vocal and facial expression regardless of valence, and also being able to accurately process emotional speech.

[75][76][77] A 2014 analysis from the journal of Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews reported that there is evidence that "sex differences in empathy have phylogenetic and ontogenetic roots in biology and are not merely cultural byproducts driven by socialization.