Memoria AutobiograficaGrysman y Hudson, 2013 PDF

Developmental Review 33 (2013) 239–272
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Developmental Review
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/dr
Gender differences in autobiographical memory:

Developmental and methodological
considerations
Azriel Grysman ⇑, Judith A. Hudson
Rutgers University, United States
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: Gender differences have surfaced in inconsistent ways in autobio-

Received 5 June 2012 graphical memory studies. When apparent, researchers find gender
Revised 29 May 2013 differences such that women report more vivid memory experi-
Available online 29 July 2013
ences than men and women include more details about emotions,
about other people, and about the meaningfulness of their memo-
Keywords:
ries. Specifically, females include more emotion, more elaboration,
Autobiographical memory
Gender differences
and a greater sense of connectedness to others in their narratives,
Episodic memory and we consider the possible connection between these tendencies
and women’s advantage on a number of autobiographical and epi-
sodic memory tasks. However, not all studies of autobiographical
memory find gender differences. We propose that gender differ-
ences in autobiographical memory development and interpersonal
socialization contribute to the differences found, and that gender
differences can be attributed, at least in part, to the influence of
conversations with parents when autobiographical memory skills
are developing. An examination of studies in which gender differ-
ences are not found suggests that specific instructions, context,
gender salience, and the type of autobiographical memory measure
used can mitigate gender differences. We conclude by outlining
future directions for research, including longitudinal studies and
experiments designed to systematically examine gender in auto-
biographical memory for its own sake.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
⇑ Corresponding author. Address: 198 College Hill Rd, Clinton, New York 13323, United States.
E-mail address: azi.grysman@gmail.com (A. Grysman).
0273-2297/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dr.2013.07.004
240 A. Grysman, J.A. Hudson / Developmental Review 33 (2013) 239–272
Introduction
Decades of autobiographical memory research have yielded dozens of studies that document gen-
der differences with a variety of methods, but also many studies that have yielded more equivocal re-
sults. When differences are reported, women are generally found to include more information in their
memory narratives, and report more vivid recollections and more emotional memories than men.
Girls’ and women’s autobiographical memories have been described as more episodic, more emotion-
ally complex, more coherent, and more personally meaningful as compared to those of boys and men,
and women have been credited with superior autobiographical memory (Buckner & Fivush, 1998; Ely
& Ryan, 2008; Pillemer, Wink, DiDonato, & Sanborn, 2003; Stapley & Haviland, 1989). Despite many
studies that have reported gender differences, effect sizes are often small and numerous experiments
have not found gender differences (e.g. Bauer, McAdams, & Sakaeda, 2005; McLean, 2005; Schlagman,
Kliegel, Schultz, & Kvavilashvili, 2009).
The goal of this review is to critically examine research on gender differences in autobiographical
memory, considering possible causes of gender differences in autobiographical memory, and focusing
on how current developmental models of autobiographical memory development can deepen an
understanding of these findings. We also examine the methodologies and elicitation contexts that
have and have not elicited gender differences in autobiographical memory. A comprehensive review
of which contexts and methods elicit gender differences can lend insight into the memory processes
involved and methodological issues that can either attenuate or dissipate gender differences. Our re-
view of the most recent findings suggests that gender differences in autobiographical memory may
reflect women’s and men’s tendencies to include different kinds of information in reporting personal
experiences and that these tendencies are influenced by a number of factors, including socialization
and the development of autobiographical memory in the early childhood years. However, we caution
throughout the review that gender’s role in autobiographical memory has not been sufficiently stud-
ied for its own sake, as many of the researchers whose studies are reviewed here reported gender dif-
ferences as one among many findings, and not as the driving force of their research. This reality leads
to methodological challenges and findings that temper the conclusions of this approach. We also
consider possible broader impacts of gender differences in autobiographical recall, such as the rela-
tionship to gender differences found in other types of episodic memory and whether gender differ-
ences constitute an advantage for women or merely describe differences in how men and women
tell autobiographical narratives.
An overview of gender differences in autobiographical memory faces the challenge of the possi-
ble relevance of numerous studies that did not find or did not test for gender differences. In an
effort to incorporate as many studies of gender differences in autobiographical memory as possible,
including studies that did not find or did not test for them, autobiographical memory studies from
non-clinical populations that reported gender differences were included, as were studies with sim-
ilar methods of data collection and analysis that did not report gender differences. Our analysis fo-
cuses on gender differences in what is recalled and how it is recalled, as opposed to dating of
memories and the frequency of recall. We therefore excluded from consideration studies primarily
concerned with the age of earliest memory and the reminiscence bump (Rubin & Schulkind, 1997),
although it should be noted that gender differences are rarely reported in these studies. Addition-
ally, since the models presented here stress the social and cultural construction of autobiographical
memory, it should be noted that the majority of evidence reviewed here comes from samples of
North Americans of European descent, but comparisons to other cultures and locations are made
when possible.
Additionally, although meta-analysis is a useful way of examining compilations of studies from dif-
ferent contexts, because the narrative data and the dependent measures we review are so varied, we
offer a conceptual review instead. Narrative data include narratives elicited through conversation,
independent narratives verbally reported to another person, written narratives, accounts of individual
events, and entire life stories. Dependent measures include analyses of narrative content (e.g. refer-
ence to emotions, length of narrative, specificity of detail, degree of meaning making), participant
ratings of characteristics of their own memories (e.g. reported vividness, confidence, emotionality),
A. Grysman, J.A. Hudson / Developmental Review 33 (2013) 239–272 241
and varied measures of accuracy. Finally, data from both children and adults are reviewed. Instead of
pooling data from such a disparate array of instruments and populations in a meta-analysis, we iden-
tify underlying commonalities among studies in which gender differences are evident and among
those in which they are not, and hope that when more data from the various methodologies accumu-
late, a focused meta-analysis will be more possible.
A note on terminology is in order: although the term autobiographical memory can be used to refer
to both semantic and episodic memory, this review refers to studies that primarily examine episodic
aspects of memory. The term autobiographical memory is used in this paper to refer to memories of
one’s own experiences in which the narrator is the main character (e.g. memory for a turning point
in one’s life), and episodic memory is used to refer to episodic memories that do not necessarily pertain
to one’s own life experiences (e.g. memory for a conversation read in an experiment). When we refer
to gender differences throughout this review, we understand the complexity that lies behind gender
identity and recognize that gender is more than simply biological sex. Gender identity is constructed
through a complex and dynamic interaction of biology, gender role socialization, and perceptions of
stereotypes, norms, and behaviors that vary greatly. However, the studies that we review which report
gender differences predominantly ask participants to self-identify as male, female, or (sometimes)
transgender, and use this self-identification as the basis for comparison. Thus, when we refer to gender
differences we are not taking a firm stance on the role of nurture as opposed to nature, but are describ-
ing data as they have been collected.
We begin this review with an overview of theoretical models of autobiographical memory that are
essential to understanding how these gender differences develop and are expressed. In the theoretical
models discussed in this review, autobiographical memory is conceptualized as an important and bi-
directional point of interaction between self and memory. For example, a memory of a self-relevant
event can be analyzed both for its implications for the self and for what is remembered, and the pro-
cesses involved in self-relevance and memory affect one another. Given this overlapping relationship,
an analysis of gender in autobiographical memory is necessarily intertwined with an understanding of
how women and men differ in their respective senses of self.
Defining autobiographical memory and its development
The Self Memory System
In Conway and colleagues’ Self Memory System model of autobiographical memory (SMS, Conway,
2005; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000; Conway, Singer, & Tagini, 2004), the self is conceptualized as a
body of knowledge that has been abstracted from the episodic memories of one’s life. Through a per-
son’s experiences, she notices patterns about herself – how she responds to certain situations, how she
generally acts, and how she usually relates to other people. For example, by connecting her positive
experiences as captain of her middle school’s swim team, as a camp counselor in high school, and
as the organizer of social events in her college sorority, Jennifer can establish a sense of self as an
extrovert and a leader.
In turn, the conceptual self serves to organize episodic memories, enabling efficient use of and
access to memories from events in one’s life. The claim of the SMS is that goals of the self impact
on how episodes are encoded, stored, and retrieved. This model stresses a bi-directional relation-
ship: what a person knows about himself is formed from his episodic memories; conversely, the
conceptual self influences what and how he remembers. Such a conceptualization of self is impor-
tant because it provides individuals with the ability to establish self-continuity across different time
periods of their lives (Pillemer, 1998). This ability to connect events in one’s life to a concept of self
has been referred to as autobiographical reasoning (Habermas & Bluck, 2000). It entails not simply
remembering an event that happened, but incorporating consequential events into a coherent
understanding of self. In other words, autobiographical reasoning involves adding an interpretive
layer to the events of one’s life. If men and women conceive of their sense of self differently, that
may lead to different interpretations of events, and these differences may be reflected in their per-
sonal memory narratives.
Social cultural development of autobiographical memory
Social interactionist approaches to cognitive development based on Vygotsky’s (1962, 1978) theo-
ries have stressed that this interpretive layer involved in autobiographical memory is something that
children learn through conversations with others, mostly their parents (Nelson, 1993; Nelson &
Fivush, 2004; Reese, 2002). Through these early conversations, children develop structure in their cau-
sal understanding of language, themselves, and the world (for a review, see Callanan & Valle, 2008).
For example, children begin using words and phrases they hear (such as ‘I know,’ Nelson, 2007) before
fully understanding them. At first, children only use these phrases in contexts that they have heard
them being used, suggesting an incomplete understanding of the phrase. Through conversations, mod-
eling, prompting, and coaching from parents, children develop an understanding of the phrase’s mean-
ing and its appropriate usage. Similarly, around age 2, children begin to tell stories about themselves
(Harter, 2006). This attempt to talk about the self signifies a possible beginning of autobiographical
memory, but this type of memory only becomes structured into its adult form through scaffolding
via conversations with parents about past events.
Scaffolding from parents is especially important in the child’s learning how to narrate an event be-
cause the elements that contribute to a good narrative often have no visible referents (Nelson, 2007).
Goal states, beliefs, desires, and emotions often play a crucial role in turning a narrative from a simple
list of events that occurred into a meaningful recounting of an episode (Gergen & Gergen, 1988), one
that includes the ‘‘landscape of consciousness’’ (Bruner, 1986). Children use cognitive, emotional, and
perceptual terms by age 2, but it is not clear that these terms are fully understood until age 4 (Nelson,
2007), suggesting that a great deal of learning about proper usage occurs in these years.
In a review of autobiographical memory development, Nelson and Fivush (2004) presented their
Social Cultural Developmental Theory (SCDT), which conceptualizes developing autobiographical mem-
ory skills as an integration of multiple systems, including cognitive, social, and language capacities.
SCDT uses a dynamic developmental systems theory approach (Oyama, 1985; Thelen & Smith,
1994), stressing that each emerging skill in a human infant affects not only that particular skill, but
a number of related skills, as well as the interactions between the changing organism and its environ-
ment. Thus, the development of autobiographical memory is viewed in the SCDT model (Nelson &
Fivush, 2004) as the outcome of developing skills regarding self-representation, theory of mind,
episodic and semantic memory, and language.
According to the SCDT model, at early ages, children’s autobiographical memories are largely elic-
ited by parents in conversation (Nelson & Fivush, 2004). Very young children provide little informa-
tion in these conversations and rely on their parents to provide the majority of the details; thus,
conversations with parents, especially mothers, have a powerful impact on children’s developing
memory capabilities. Through conversations and other interactions with parents, children learn to dis-
tinguish between their own perspectives and others’, to infer causal relationships between thoughts,
actions, and events, and to evaluate the emotional and cognitive effects of events (Nelson & Fivush,
2004). When a parent elaborates in conversation with a child, either by adding details or by asking
the child to add details, the parent communicates that these details are necessary for a full account
of the event. For example, when discussing a recent family outing, a parent may ask who else went,
where the experience happened, or how the child thought or felt about it. The child learns through
these questions which details are important components of the story about the family outing, both
in how it is to be told and in what is to be remembered. In this way, mothers scaffold children’s mem-
ory development by teaching them what parts of an event to pay attention to, how to evaluate the
event, and that connecting actions to beliefs and desires – such as a person’s feelings or another’s
intentions – are important to remember and include in an event narrative. Through the questions they
ask and the information they add, mothers help children organize what happened in their memories,
building a sense of the self in time for the child (Reese, 2002). Through disagreement, mothers instill
within children a sense that the child can have her own interpretation of the event, as opposed to tell-
ing a correct version of the episode (Nelson & Fivush, 2004).
In addition to learning the aspects of how to tell a narrative in these conversations with parents,
children also learn important skills that contribute to the developing self concept. Through conversa-
tions with parents, children learn to extract meaning from an event that is relevant to the sense of self
and to establish differences between self and other through references to internal states (Bird & Reese,
2006). This extraction of meaning from events over time fosters the development of a coherent auto-
biography that eventually will be unified across multiple, discrete events.
The SCDT model is a broad approach to the development of memory alongside the influences of
gender, culture, and interactions with parents. To speak of support for such a model, both with the
SCDT and SMS models, is to discuss fruitful avenues of research that are in line with the theoretical
models’ general predictions, rather than discussing specific studies testing specific hypotheses. In this
sense, support for the SCDT model comes from studies showing a relationship between maternal rem-
iniscing style and children’s memory narrative production. A highly elaborative maternal style is re-
lated to children’s expanded narratives (Hudson, 1990; McCabe & Peterson, 1991; for a review, see
Fivush, Haden, & Reese, 2006). Reese, Haden, and Fivush (1993) recorded mother–child conversations
at four intervals, when children were 40–70 months of age. They examined mothers’ use of elabora-
tions (questions asked to children in which new information was added to the conversation) and rep-
etitions (repeated questions that do not add new information, but instead reflect repeating similar
questions in an effort to elicit the correct answer from the child). At all time points, more elaborations
by the mothers concurrently predicted more memory responses provided by children; mothers’ rep-
etitions were only concurrently correlated with children’s memory responses at the two later ages.
More importantly, maternal elaborations at 40 months predicted children’s memory responses at
58 and 70 months; maternal repetitions at earlier ages did not predict memory responses at any later
age (Reese et al., 1993).
Relationships between maternal elicitation style and children’s production have been found as
early as 19 months (Harley & Reese, 1999) and for recall of both everyday events and highly salient
events (i.e., visits to the hospital emergency room, Peterson, Sales, Rees, & Fivush, 2007). When
non-elaborative mothers are trained to be more elaborative in conversations with their children, their
children subsequently include more references to emotions and other elaborative details in shared
reminiscing (Reese & Newcombe, 2007; Van Bergen, Salmon, Dadds, & Allen, 2009). In addition, one
study recorded mother–child conversations when children were between ages 2 and 4. When these
same children were age 12–13, the children whose mothers were more elaborative at age 2–4 were
able to report earlier memories (i.e., memories from earlier times in their lives) than their peers whose
mothers were previously judged to be less elaborative (Jack, MacDonald, Reese, & Hayne, 2009). An-
other longitudinal study (Reese, Jack, & White, 2010) recruited adolescents who had previously par-
ticipated at age 19–65 months. These participants were asked to report two life changing events,
their earliest memory, and the events they had discussed in their earlier participation at age 19–
65 months. Children of more elaborative mothers recalled more details of events when they were ado-
lescents and scored higher on a measure of insight into self based on these memories. These results
indicate that maternal elaborations during memory conversations in early childhood may have an
enduring effect on children’s, and later adults’, memory narrative production.
In the sections that follow, we review evidence of overlapping findings in research on children’s
and adults’ autobiographical memory. We review studies that have identified gender differences in
autobiographical memories, and consider the strengths and limitations of these studies. Next, we
examine research suggesting that females have superior autobiographical recall as compared to males,
and consider possible connections between these findings and gender differences reported in episodic
memory tasks. We also review literature regarding how gender differences in approaches to interper-
sonal relationships can influence autobiographical recall. Finally, we consider contextual and develop-
mental influences on gender differences in autobiographical memory.
Gender differences in elaboration
We begin our review of gender differences in autobiographical memory by examining differences

reported on emotion usage and other forms of elaboration in children’s and adults’ memory narratives.
A good narrative provides the listener or reader with the kind of information that explains why the
event being narrated is important or meaningful. As explained above, a skilled narrator tells more than
the who, what, where, and when of an event; she elaborates in ways that give the event meaning.
Bruner (1986) proposed that a narrative combines the ‘‘landscape of action’’ with the ‘‘landscape of
consciousness.’’ In other words, the interpretation of actions in terms of ‘‘goals, motivations, inten-
tions, beliefs, affect, and values’’ (Nelson, 1996, p. 186) forms a narrative out of a skeletal sequence
of events by providing meaning. In analyzing the content of autobiographical event narratives,
researchers have examined the degree to which this interpretive stance is conveyed through the
use of conventional narrative elaborations.1 Elaborations include references to people’s emotions and
other internal states, such as thoughts and intentions that are part of the ‘‘landscape of consciousness.’’
These types of elaborations provide details that go beyond the sequence of actions to infuse a narrative
with meaning (Fivush & Baker-Ward, 2005). Elaborations can also include other interpretive tools, such
as exclamations or quoted speech, which express the interpretive stance of the narrator and make a nar-
rative more than a direct report of events.
Because of the important role maternal reminiscing plays in children’s autobiographical memory
development, it stands to reason that if mothers elaborate differently with boys than with girls, there
would be a difference in how children remember. An analysis of the literature on parent–child rem-
iniscing suggests two major differences between boys and girls: emotional and non-emotional elabo-
ration. For both of these differences we include data on how parents speak to their children alongside
data on children’s production.
Gender differences in parent–child memory conversations
Emotional elaboration
Studies of parent–child conversations have found that mothers, and sometimes fathers, use more
emotion words when they speak with their daughters than with their sons. Fivush, Berlin, Sales,
Mennuti-Washburn, and Cassidy (2003) found that mothers had longer conversations with their
4-year-old daughters when instructed to discuss events relating to anger, sadness, and fear. Addition-
ally, mothers used more emotion words and a greater variety of emotion words when discussing par-
ent-nominated unique autobiographical events with daughters than with sons (Adams, Kuebli, Boyle,
& Fivush, 1995; Kuebli & Fivush, 1992). Dunn, Bretherton, and Munn (1987) observed mothers and
children in everyday interactions in their own homes. They reported that, at 24 months, girls use more
feeling state terms than boys, and much of those uses were in response to mother-initiated
conversation.
It has also been suggested that mothers speak about emotions differently with sons than with
daughters in everyday conversations about a variety of topics. When Cervantes and Callanan (1998)
instructed parents to enact four stories with their children (age 2 or 4) using toy people and houses,
they found that when mothers spoke about emotions, they did so more often for boys as explanations
(e.g. the emotion used to explain a cause or a result of some other action) and with girls they more
often simply referred to the emotion. Brody and Hall (1993) report that, in conversations with children
about emotional experiences, mothers talk more with daughters than with sons about the emotions
they are experiencing, and talk more with sons than with daughters about the consequences of their
feelings. Researchers have argued that this different way of speaking to boys about emotion promotes
incorporating emotion explanations into a sense of agency, something stressed more with boys than
with girls (Cervantes & Callanan, 1998; Fivush, 1989). For girls, conversely, the emotions used are a
description of the scene itself, a fact of the event that is recalled. The SCDT model of autobiographical
memory development (Nelson & Fivush, 2004) predicts that such differences in how parents speak to
their children have lasting influences on children’s autobiographical memory by directing boys and
girls to conceive of the emotional elements of a narrative differently; for girls they become integral
to the event itself, just as the location or the time when it occurred; for boys, the emotions are relevant
inasmuch as they have direct consequences.
One concern regarding findings of greater emotion in parents’ talk with girls and girls’ autobio-
graphical memory narratives is that they may be an artifact of parents simply talking more to their
1
As discussed above, when coding mother–child conversations, elaborations refer to statements that provide new information in
the conversation. In contrast, the term elaboration used in narrative coding refers to specific narrative elements, as described in the
text.
daughters than to their sons, or of daughters being more talkative. It is important to note that gender
differences in reference to emotion that have been reported are independent of measures of overall
word production. Studies of parent–child conversations often alleviate this concern by basing their
analyses of words used on proportion scores instead of frequencies (e.g. Reese, Haden, & Fivush,
1996), and similar practices are typically used in adult narrative analysis (e.g. Bauer, Stennes, & Haight,
2003; Bohanek & Fivush, 2010). Cervantes and Callanan (1998) used a partial correlation and found
that mothers’ emotion use moderately correlated with children’s emotion use, independent of chil-
dren’s total speech production. Another method used is to compare the types of utterances that con-
tribute to longer narratives (e.g. Fivush et al., 2003). Because girls tell narratives that are more
evaluative and include more emotion terms, but do not include more non-elaborative speech, this sug-
gests that girls tell longer narratives than boys because they use more emotions and evaluations, as
opposed to suggesting that their greater use of emotions and evaluations can be reduced to narrative
length.
Non-emotional elaboration
Non-emotional elaboration is measured in two ways. First, differences have been reported in terms
of the amount of information discussed in conversation or reported in independent narratives. Second,
the amount of evaluative elements in conversations or narratives has been used as a measure of elab-
oration. Evaluative elements include references to internal states or the narrator’s opinion, indicated
by special emphasis or intensifying adjectives.
Reese et al. (1993) measured the number of statements in which mothers introduce new informa-
tion into a conversation, and found that mothers included more information in conversations with
their daughters than with their sons at 40, 58, and 70 months, and girls provided more memory re-
sponses than boys at 58 and 70 months. Several investigations have also found that mothers discuss
more information in memory conversations with girls than with boys (Fivush et al., 2003; Reese &
Fivush, 1993; Reese et al., 1996). Mothers are also more evaluative (Fivush et al., 2003; Reese & Fivush,
1993; Reese et al., 1996) and use more supportive speech with daughters than with sons (Leaper,
Anderson, & Sanders, 1998). In mother–child conversations about a typical school day, Flannagan
and BakerWard (1996) found that 4- and 5-year-old girls provided more information than boys. In
narratives of shared past events, 40- and 70-month-old girls told narratives that were longer, and in-
cluded more evaluations and more orienting statements than boys’ narratives, despite no differences
found in language ability (Haden, Haine, & Fivush, 1997). Additionally, children from this longitudinal
study were interviewed again at age 8, and girls recalled more than boys from the earlier discussions
at age 40–70 months (Fivush & Schwarzmueller, 1998). Pasupathi and Wainryb (2010) elicited narra-
tives from children age 5–17 of a time with friends when they felt good or bad. They found that girls
added more factual and interpretive information, referred more often to goals, and used more evalu-
ative language than boys, and these differences increased with age. Finally, three studies involving
children and adolescents have found that females referred more often to cognitive processes than
males (Bohanek & Fivush, 2010; Greenhoot, Johnson, & McCloskey, 2005; Habermas & de Silveira,
2008).
Thus, several investigations have shown that, in conversations with girls, parents provide more
information and evaluation, and discuss more emotion than they do with boys. The way parents speak
to boys and girls is not exclusive to talk about the past, and may reflect more general interactive styles
(but see Lytton & Romney, 1991, for a review of parents’ socialization of boys and girls). There is also
evidence that girls and boys differ in their personal narratives regarding the amount of information
reported, amount of evaluative content, and reference to emotion.
Why are parents more elaborative with girls?

It is tempting to interpret the preceding findings as suggesting that gender differences in elabora-
tion are the result of parents’ gender role expectations. However, a number of studies suggest that the
explanation is not so simple. Fivush (1998) found that, at 40 months, girls recalled more, and used
more evaluations and orienting statements than boys. Given that this age is very early in the autobio-
graphical memory process, Fivush considers the possibility that parents speak differently to their
daughters as a response to the children’s behaviors and points to differences in temperament at birth
that may contribute to different styles of social interaction. Infant girls are able to maintain steady
alertness for longer, while boys are more irritable and have trouble stabilizing after arousal (Davis
& Emory, 1995; Hsu & Fogel, 2003). In turn, boys need to be comforted and held close more, whereas
girls are cradled more, leading to more face-to-face time. Because girls are able to sustain longer face-
to-face time and parents expect that girls need and want more face-to-face time, parents put more
work into maintaining this time for girls, who end up with better face-to-face communication skills
(Caldera, Huston, & O’Brien, 1989). Once children are able to verbally reminisce with parents, girls al-
ready have an advantage and the existing differences are exacerbated further. In other words, mothers
may elaborate more with daughters because daughters can better sustain face-to-face interaction, and
these maternal elaborations develop daughters’ autobiographical memory capacities further.
Another possibility is suggested by Malatesta and Haviland (1982). In a study involving parent–
child interactions that were recorded on video, they found differences in the facial expressions of boys
and girls age 3–6 months. Boys displayed two predominant types of facial expressions, knit brow and
enjoyment; girls displayed these two expressions as well, but also displayed interest and anger facial
expressions, suggesting that girls display a more diverse array of emotions than boys as early as
3 months of age, and that other differences found in emotion expression may be inborn and not re-
lated to parental socialization. Additionally, recordings of mothers’ facial expressions suggested they
use similar expressions for children of both sexes. Malatesta and Haviland (1982) suggested that par-
ents may perceive boys as less interested in them based on their facial expressions, and respond
accordingly. Similarly, numerous studies have reported that infant girls are more responsive to social
stimuli than infant boys. For example, infant girls show more orientation to a voice or face than infant
boys (Connellan, Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Batki, & Ahluwalia, 2000), maintain longer eye contact
with an experimenter (Hittelman & Dickes, 1979), and show better discrimination of emotional
expressions than infant boys (McClure, 2000); conversely, boys, but not girls, prefer to look at a
mechanical mobile than at a face shortly after birth (Connellan et al., 2000; for a review, see Alexander
& Wilcox, 2012). This additional finding raises the possibility that differences in how parents speak
differently to boys and girls about their memories at 40–70 months may reflect parental responses
to existing gender differences among children, rather than the argument presented above that gender
differences emerge from differential socialization. If this were the case, it would further support a dy-
namic systems approach to understanding autobiographical memory development by showing how
changes at many different ages can, over time, contribute to changes in the child’s interaction with
the environment.
Taken together, findings in this section suggest that, although children only begin to speak and
report on their experiences once they develop verbal abilities, measurable differences have been re-
ported in the first year of life, and gender differences found in later years may reflect parents respond-
ing to their children’s existing patterns of behavior, rather than being related to parents’ different
responses to boys and girls.
Interpretive considerations
One concern regarding data from parent–child conversations is that sample sizes in many of these
studies are small. Of the 18 studies reported above containing narrative data from children, the med-
ian sample size was only 25.5, and seven of these studies used the same original sample (Adams et al.,
1995; Fivush, 1998; Fivush & Schwarzmueller, 1998; Haden et al., 1997; Kuebli & Fivush, 1992; Reese
et al., 1993, 1996). In addition to sample size, White, middle-class participants are the predominant
subjects of these studies, limiting their generalizability. These sample characteristics reflect the diffi-
culties inherent in collecting longitudinal data that depends on extensive cooperation and motivation
from both parents and young children.
In addition to methodological concerns, findings of gender differences in the way parents speak to
their children and children’s subsequent performance are at times conflicting. In discussing events
when their children were happy, sad, scared, or angry, mothers used more negative emotion words
with sons than with daughters, and were more likely to explain anger with boys than with girls (Bird
& Reese, 2006), but other research has found that parents more often discuss sadness with girls
(Adams et al., 1995). These findings highlight the fact that, for some emotions, parents may place more
emphasis for boys than for girls. Interestingly, the greater emphasis on anger, a negative dominant
emotion, for boys, and sadness, a negative submissive emotion, for girls, may further highlight the role
of gender-based expectations in parent–child conversations.
The age at which gender differences are found amongst parents and children is also not consistent
across all studies. Some studies have found that girls tell longer narratives than boys at 40 months
(Haden et al., 1997), and use more emotion terms at 24 months (Dunn et al., 1987). Conversely,
Cervantes and Callanan (1998) reported that, in a narrative task, girls used more emotion words than
boys at age 2, but not at age 4. Two studies of mother–child conversations found no differences in
maternal elaboration when talking to boys or girls (Harley & Reese, 1999; Reese & Brown, 2000).
Flannagan, BakerWard, and Graham (1995) found that for certain types of events, such as classroom
learning, mothers are more elaborative with boys than with girls.
Finally, some findings suggest that children’s performance, even at early ages, is influenced by their
context and conversational partner. At 40 months, both girls and boys used more orienting and evalu-
ative statements when conversing with their fathers and with an experimenter than with their mothers
(Haden et al., 1997). Similarly, Reese et al. (1996) reported that both boys and girls from age 40 to
70 months provided more overall information when conversing with fathers than with mothers.
These limitations caution against oversimplifying results from studies finding that parents use
more elaborations with girls and that girls subsequently elaborate more in their autobiographical nar-
ratives. They suggest that parents’ styles are not the only factor contributing to children’s developing
autobiographical memory, and that many of the results reported from parent–child conversations are
based on concurrent, rather than long term, correlations, and should be interpreted cautiously. How-
ever, many studies do find evidence that parents include more elaborations in their memory conver-
sations with their daughters than with their sons, and that girls’ narratives, even at early ages, are
different than boys’. Although some studies raise questions as to whether parent–child interactions
are the only source of these differences, the majority of studies support the conclusion that gender
differences are present at early ages in that parents use more and more varied emotion words, more
evaluative language, and more information with their daughters, and girls tell narratives with more
emotion words and more information than boys.
Gender differences in children’s memory narratives
Research on children’s independent autobiographical recall when asked to report event memories
by an experimenter have found evidence of more elaborative recall by girls that parallel the findings of
gender differences in parent–child memory conversations. For example, Buckner and Fivush (1998)
found that 7–8-year-old girls’ autobiographical narratives included more emotion words than those
of boys the same age. In a longitudinal study of autobiographical recall in children from 40 to
70 months, Fivush, Haden, and Adam (1995) found that girls included more internal state evaluations,
used more complex temporal markers, and included more descriptions than did boys. In a study of
children’s recall of a visit to an emergency room, Peterson (2011) found that the amount of detail
about people increased in girls’ memory narratives from 3 to 13 years, but there was no corresponding
age-related increase for boys.
Some studies have also found that girls’ recall of events is more complete, that is, includes more
information, than boys’ recall of events. Fivush and Schwarzmueller (1998) found that 8-year-old girls
reported more information when recalling personal memories. Analysis of the relationship between
measures of verbal ability and children’s recalled ruled out the possibility that girls’ more complete
recall was due to gender differences in language ability. In a study of 5–12-year-old children’s narra-
tives about emotionally positive and negative events, girls reported more activities than boys,
although there were no gender differences for number of descriptions provided (Fivush, Hazzard,
Sales, Sarfati, & Brown, 2003). Peterson and McCabe (1983) found that girls from 4 to 9 years
responded to more prompts from experimenters to report an autobiographical memory and they re-
ported more memory narratives than same-aged boys. When children’s three longest narratives were
analyzed, girls’ narratives were also longer than boys’ narratives.
Despite these reported differences, it is important to note that several studies did not find signif-
icant gender differences in the amount or type of information included in children’s autobiographical
memory narratives (Burgwyn-Bailes, Baker-Ward, Gordon, & Ornstein, 2001; Fivush, Hudson, &
Nelson, 1984; Fivush, Sales, & Bohanek, 2008; Fivush, Sales, Goldberg, Bahrick, & Parker, 2004;
Ornstein, Gordon, & Larus, 1992; Peterson, Pardy, Tizzard-Drover, & Warren, 2005; Peterson, Parsons,
& Dean, 2004; Peterson & Whalen, 2001; Tizzard-Drover & Peterson, 2004). In addition, many studies
of children’s autobiographical memory have not tested for gender effects (Ackil, Van Abbema, & Bauer,
2003; Bahrick, Fivush, & Fivush, 1998; Hudson & Fivush, 1991; Morris, Baker-Ward, & Bauer, 2008;
Peterson, 1999; Peterson & Bell, 1996; Peterson & Rideout, 1998; Peterson et al., 2007; Pillemer,
Picariello, & Pruett, 1994; Van Abbema & Bauer, 2005).
Gender differences in adults’ memory narratives
Evidence for gender differences in the amount of elaboration provided in memory narratives from
(mostly American) adult samples is rife, indicating that women are more likely than men to include
references to thoughts and feelings when recounting autobiographical experiences. As with children,
the most salient type of elaboration is reference to emotion. Across numerous methodologies, ages,
and recall contexts, women write and tell narratives with more reference to their own and to others’
emotions than men. When asked to report an event that they viewed as either self-consistent or self-
discrepant, women from both a college student sample and an older adult sample (average age = 73)
used more emotion language in their narratives than men (Rice & Pasupathi, 2010). Friedman and
Pines (1991) found more direct expression of emotion amongst female than male college students
in narratives of their earliest memories. Boals (2010) asked 170 college students to write about a po-
sitive or negative event in one line, and found that women used more negative and fewer positive
emotion words in their descriptions of negative events, though no differences were found for positive
events. In a study of flashbulb events, women (age 45–60) used more positive and negative words than
men in their descriptions of three flashbulb memories (Niedzwienska, 2003). Bauer et al. (2003) found
that amongst college students, for narratives of events from after the age of seven, women used more
internal state terms (cognitions, emotions, and perceptions) in their narratives than men. In narratives
of an extremely positive and extremely negative event, adolescent girls (eighth and tenth graders) told
narratives with more specific positive and negative emotion words in their narratives than boys in the
same grade (Bohanek & Fivush, 2010). Finally, Berntsen, Rubin, and Siegler (2011) instructed partici-
pants to complete the Centrality of Events Scale (Berntsen & Rubin, 2006) for positive and negative life
events, and found that women rated both positive and negative events as more central to their lives
than men. This study suggests that not only do women write with more emotion, but that emotional
events play a more significant role for women than men when thinking of life as a whole.
Other types of elaborations can contribute to narrative richness and complexity, although there is
considerable variability in how elaborations other than reference to emotion have been analyzed. For
example, Ely and Ryan (2008) found that women used more reported speech (i.e. references to specific
speech acts, such as quoted speech) than men across six different narrative conditions (high point, low
point, learning experience, earliest memory, early memory, and defining moment). Hayne and
MacDonald (2003) coded college students’ narratives of their earliest memories for units of informa-
tion included beyond the action sequence of the event and found that women provided more units of
information than men. Baron and Bluck (2009) found that, across younger (age 19–39) and older (age
64–86) adults, when reporting a personal romantic event, men included more off-target statements
than women, i.e. statements that are either irrelevant or indirectly relevant to the story, in their nar-
ratives. Off-target responding reflects a process opposite to elaboration, that of adding information to
a sequence of events that does not enhance the understanding of these events, but actually takes away
from the cohesiveness of a narrative (Baron & Bluck, 2009). Finally, studies often find that females tell
longer narratives than males (e.g. Bohanek & Fivush, 2010; Bohn & Bentsen, 2008; Fivush &
Schwarzmueller, 1998).
These findings provide converging evidence that girls and women produce more elaborated auto-
biographical memory narratives than boys and men. Across numerous ages and methodological con-
texts, female participants tell autobiographical narratives with more emotion than do male
participants, mirroring the patterns found in studies of children and of parent–child conversations.
However, findings regarding use of non-emotion elaborations are less compelling since studies use
a variety of measures of non-emotion elaboration. Due to this lack of consensus regarding what
constitutes a non-emotional elaboration in a narrative we suggest caution before concluding that gen-
der differences are consistent in this measure of narrative elaboration. In particular, it is not always
clear whether the additional narrative details provided by girls and women are indications of more
elaborated narratives, i.e. narratives in which the individual gives more detail about thoughts and feel-
ings relating to an event, or better overall recall, where the narrator is actually remembering more
information from the original occurrence.
The overlap between findings involving children and adults is intriguing. The SCDT model suggests
that tendencies that begin early in life, through differential socialization of girls and boys, lay the foun-
dation for gender differences in autobiographical memory that persist into adulthood. However, only
two longitudinal studies (Jack et al., 2009; Reese et al., 2010) to date support this possibility. Although
the similarities reported in this section suggest similar findings among children and adults, more lon-
gitudinal research must be conducted before conclusions can be drawn about the relatedness of these
bodies of literature.
Can rating scales measure elaboration?

As reported earlier in this review, numerous studies of autobiographical memory have failed to find
gender differences. In examining these studies one main theme that has emerged is that gender dif-
ferences are rare in studies that use rating scales, as opposed to narrative measures, as a dependent
measure. For example, Escobedo and Adolphs (2010) elicited memories of events that were classified
as ‘moral,’ meaning the event involved the protagonist engaging in behavior that either helped or hurt
someone. After writing a narrative of the event, participants rated their own emotions, emotional
intensity, and judgments of their own behavior after narrating an event; no gender differences were
found on these rating scales. Bluck and Alea (2009) administered the Thinking About Life Experiences
Scale (TALE; Bluck, Alea, Habermas, & Rubin, 2005) to college-age and older (average age = 73) partic-
ipants. This scale includes items regarding frequency of thinking about events, self-relevance, social
bonding, and use of memories for directing behavior. No gender differences were found on any of
these subscales. Neumann and Phillipot (2007) found no differences in ratings of specific and general
memories on scales of emotional intensity and mood when these memories were retrieved in re-
sponse to emotion cue words. St. Jacques and Levine (2007) elicited positive, negative, and neutral
memories from the previous 5 years, which participants rated on measures of personal importance,
emotion, amount of rehearsal, and amount of visualization, and found no gender differences. Finally,
in ratings of recent and distant events, Bauer et al. (2003) found no gender differences on measures of
confidence in details, frequency of discussion, personal significance, visual imagery, event uniqueness,
or affective intensity.
One exception to the general lack of gender differences on rating scales is that sometimes women
rate their memories as more vivid than men (Pohl, Bender, & Lachmann, 2005; Ross & Holmberg,
1990). However, Alea and Vick (2010), in a cross-sectional study of adults age 20–85, instructed par-
ticipants to write a relationship-defining memory and found no differences between men and women
for their ratings of their vividness, valence, intensity, and sharing, with the only exception being that
women age 40–49 reported a higher level of vividness than men of the same age.
The scarcity of gender differences in rating scale data raises an important consideration in exam-
ining evidence of gender differences in autobiographical memory. Narrative differences may reflect a
tendency that is evident in the way events are recalled and retold, as opposed to how memories are
experienced or rated. Narrative analyses provide an implicit measure that demonstrates the way an
individual conceptualizes an event as he or she is recalling it. A person may be very social in that he
has many friends, is extroverted, and enjoys the company of others, but this does not mean that he
considers social elements of his memories, such as how and what others are thinking and feeling, as
integral to the occurrence of events. Men and women may experience the same event as deeply
emotional, but that emotion will be expressed more explicitly by women in their writing, whereas
men will simply note in a later rating that the event was emotional. Rating scales raise the meth-
odological challenge of asking participants to reflect on their experiences, whereas narrative mea-
sures and recall tests involve implicit measures that can monitor participants’ performance
without participants’ awareness of the topic of study. It is possible that rating scales find fewer gen-
der differences either because they do not ask the types of questions that would capture existing
gender differences, or because they measure different cognitive processes than those reflected in
narrative measures.
An additional problem raised by the paucity of gender differences on rating scales is that studies
often do not report gender differences, either because they are not finding them or not testing for
them. This lack of reporting might also be due to the fact that researchers often study other phenom-
ena, and that adding in tests of gender differences can create confusing three-way interactions and
lead to the need to collect data from larger samples. These factors all contribute to a possible ‘file
drawer’ problem. If more researchers are finding a lack of gender differences, or finding partial gender
effects and interactions but not reporting them, studies that do report gender differences may be
receiving too much emphasis. This is a potential problem for all psychology studies, but is acutely
present in this domain because many studies of autobiographical memory set out to study other vari-
ables (e.g. moral memories, Escobedo & Adolphs, 2010; reported speech, Ely & Ryan, 2008; turning
point memories, Grysman & Hudson, 2011), and report gender difference as a contributing factor to
their analysis. Studies in autobiographical memory rarely aim to study gender exclusively. What
can result is that researchers present gender differences if they find them, citing other studies in which
gender differences have been reported, but ignore studies in which gender differences have not been
reported and ignore the issue of gender altogether if no gender differences are found. Despite this lim-
itation, it is important to note that when gender differences are found and reported, they almost never
involve men reporting more detail than women, and this should also be considered when looking at
the literature as a whole.
Other methodological concerns

One challenge to determining the consistent gender differences in autobiographical memory is lim-
itations in the samples that have been studied. Some studies include small samples or samples with a
disproportionate balance of men and women. For example, Strongman and Kemp (1991) interviewed
participants about memories of times when they experienced each of 12 emotions. They found no gen-
der differences in the distribution of when the events occurred, whether memories were specific or
general, and whether the event was positive or negative. However, this study included 62 women
and only 21 men. Neumann and Phillipot (2007) reported no gender differences in emotional intensity
and mood after narrating memories, but report that only 13 men participated, compared to 45 women.
Woike and Polo (2001) and Nakash and Brody (2006) reported the influence of agentic and communal
motives on how memories are told, but studied an entirely female sample. Similarly, a number of the
studies reported above with children involve small samples (e.g. Haden et al., 1997; Kuebli & Fivush,
1992; Reese et al., 1993, 1996), due to the practical difficulty of bringing children and their parents
into a laboratory, and contacting them again months or years later.
In addition, some studies that may be relevant don’t report gender differences, and the reader is left
to wonder if this lack of report comes from a disinterest of the researchers or because gender effects
were tested and found nonsignificant, and thus left out of results. In our review of autobiographical
memory studies, we found a number of studies whose results could potentially be relevant to a dis-
cussion of gender, but did not report any effects relating to gender. However, the majority of these
studies (Comblain & D’Argembeau, 2005; D’Argembeau, Comblain, & van der Linden, 2003; Ritchie,
Skowronksi, Walker, & Wood, 2006; Schaefer & Phillippot, 2005; Schlagman et al., 2009; Talarico,
Labar, & Rubin, 2004) use rating scales as their dependent variables, which our earlier section suggests
would not find gender differences. Other studies involving analysis of narratives (e.g. Piolino et al.,
2006; Webster & Gould, 2007) include measures of valence, expressions of intimacy, and sensory de-
tail, and these measures would be of interest to a discussion of gender differences, but no analyses of
gender are discussed.
Cultural considerations
The Social Cultural Developmental Theory model argues that reminiscing is a skill that is, at least in
part, learned from caregivers and parents, but also from one’s cultural milieu. Although cultural com-
parisons are not the primary focus of this review, studies that indicate the influence of culture can be
informative in two ways: by examining if gender differences are more or less apparent in different
locations, and by examining cultural practices as a factor in addition to gender that influences auto-
biographical memory.
Cross-cultural differences
The SCDT model suggests that, because of the elaborative emphasis provided by their mothers in
early conversations, girls learn to structure their memories in a more elaborated way than boys.
Through conversations with parents, children learn which elements of a story are worthy of attention
and store them in memory for later recall. For girls, elaborations are given a greater weight and are
stored as a more integral part of an episode; for boys, elaborations do not have the same privileged
status. To examine the extent of the impact of socialization, we turn to cross-cultural research on
autobiographical memory. Cultures vary in terms of the degree to which parents elaborate with their
children in memory conversations. Individuals raised in cultures that are more elaborative than others
should demonstrate similar memory advantages differences when compared to those raised in less
elaborative cultures to the ones as women demonstrate when compared over to men in Western
cultures.
Research on cultural differences in autobiographical memory shows that, in cultural groups in
which parents are more elaborative, children demonstrate more elaborated and detailed memories
for personal events. Mullen and Yi (1995) found that Caucasian mothers spoke with their 3-
year-old children about past events three times as often as Korean mothers in everyday conversations.
Caucasian mothers also referred more often to their children’s and to others’ thoughts and feelings;
Korean mothers referred more often to social norms. Similarly, Wang (2006) reported that Euro-
pean–American more provided more elaboration and evaluation in memory conversations with their
3-year-old children than Chinese and Chinese immigrant mothers. This finding is consistent with re-
search showing that East Asian mothers are more likely to tell their children what they should think
and feel, using stories to teach lessons, while Western mothers are more likely to ask their children
what they think and how they feel, using stories to build autonomy (Kulkofsky, Wang, & Koh, 2009;
Miller, Wiley, Fung, & Liang, 1997; Ross & Wang, 2010). Cross-cultural comparisons of children’s mem-
ory reports reflect these different styles. European American children tell detailed stories of their own
experiences, emphasizing their feelings, preferences, and opinions, while East Asian children tell
stories about others, showing a concern for moral correctness, and providing fewer details (Han,
Leichtman, & Wang, 1998; Wang, 2004). Wang and Ross (2005) reported that Caucasian adults re-
called more specific memories of a moment-in-time, whereas Asian adults recalled more general, rou-
tine memories. The cross-cultural differences in autobiographical memory have been documented
extensively (for a review, see Ross & Wang, 2010). They demonstrate support for the SCDT model,
in that different cultural approaches to remembering engender different memory styles, raising the
potential that a similar process is at work in gender differences. They also open the possibility that
gender differences may vary cross-culturally, based on different gender norms in different cultures,
and an examination of gender differences cross-culturally can potentially deepen our understanding
of them by identifying the phenomena that vary or are stable across cultures.
Do gender differences vary cross-culturally?

A number of studies cited above in which gender differences were found (e.g. Adams et al., 1995;
Fivush, 1998; Fivush & Schwarzmueller, 1998; Haden et al., 1997; Kuebli & Fivush, 1992; Reese et al.,
1993, 1996) emerged from a laboratory in Atlanta, GA, a city located in a part of the United States that
has more ‘‘traditional’’ gender norms. One question that may be of interest to researchers is whether
this location leads to samples in which gender differences are more prevalent. For example, studies
conducted in New Zealand (Bird & Reese, 2006; Cleveland & Reese, 2008; Harley & Reese, 1999; Reese
& Brown, 2000), a country where egalitarian tendencies are more normative (e.g. it was the first coun-
try to give women the right to vote and has had two female prime ministers in recent years), found
gender differences emerged later and were less prevalent than what was reported in the Atlanta-based
studies. However, this suggestion is speculative, and careful research would be necessary to substan-
tiate such a claim. Specifically, a measure of sex stereotyping or traditional versus egalitarian sex-
based norms would be needed to more clearly identify individuals as subscribing to gender norms,
rather than using location as a proxy for these cultural differences.
Studies comparing East Asian and European–American participants have found mixed results with
regard to gender differences. For example, Wang and Fivush (2005) instructed European–American
and Chinese mothers to discuss one positive and one negative event with their 3-year-old children.
They found that, across cultures, girls made more references to others relative to themselves than
boys, but only in negative events. Additionally, Chinese mothers attributed more emotions to their
daughters than to their sons when narrating negative events, and Chinese girls also attributed more
emotions to themselves than did Chinese boys in these memory narratives, but American boys attrib-
uted more emotion to themselves than American girls in the same narrative condition. Wang (2004)
interviewed European–American and Chinese children from pre-school to second grade, asking them
to recall four autobiographical events and coding the narrative data for various indicators, including
emotion use, volume, specificity, and autonomous orientation. No gender differences were found on
any of these measures. Wang (2006) recorded mother–child conversations between mothers and 3-
year-old children from China, Chinese immigrants to the United States, and European–Americans.
She coded narrative data for self-descriptions, children’s independent memory contributions, mater-
nal reminiscing style; across analyses, no significant effects of gender were found. Wang (2007)
conducted a follow-up study on this sample, coding narrative data for maternal elaborations and rep-
etitions, and children’s introduction of new information into the conversation. No gender differences
were found in this study.
Few autobiographical memory studies have been conducted in cultural comparisons other than
comparing East Asians to Western Europeans. Fernandez and Melzi (2008) examined the way Span-
ish-speaking Peruvian mothers spoke about internal states with their 3- and 5-year-old children when
discussing autobiographical memories. They found that mother–son dyads used more references to
internal states than mother-daughter dyads, the opposite pattern of what is often reported in North
American samples. The authors refer to the work of Fuller (1997, 1998), a Peruvian anthropologist
who studied gender roles in middle-class Lima, the location of Fernandez and Melzi’s (2008) research.
They suggest that, since Peruvian society has very rigid gender roles but also strongly emphasizes fam-
ily structure, boys are simultaneously encouraged to be autonomous in their public life and relational at
home. Fernandez and Melzi (2008) suggest that their findings may reflect an effort of mothers to instill
the relational perspective in their pre-school boys before they enter public life and encounter a culture
that discourages the expression of internal states, especially emotion. Hayne and MacDonald (2003)
compared earliest memories of Caucasian New Zealanders to Maori New Zealanders, a cultural and eth-
nic group that strongly emphasizes the importance of the past and sharing memories. They found that,
across both groups, women included more information in their narratives of the past than men.
Taken together, these studies show the potential impact that further cross-cultural comparisons
can make on an understanding of gender differences in autobiographical memory. In one culture (mid-
dle-class Lima), gender differences were in the exact opposite direction of many North American find-
ings; in another (Maori New Zealand), they were the same; in a third (East Asia), results are less
consistent. In all, these findings suggest that cross-cultural comparisons can uncover social influences
on gender differences if careful hypotheses based on known cultural differences can be constructed
and tested. However, cross-cultural comparisons are subject to the same methodological challenges
described earlier in this paper, including sample size and the type of dependent variables used. Since
cross-cultural studies rarely set out with the goal of studying gender differences directly and only in-
clude gender differences in the discussion when they are found, a clear consensus of the contributions
from cross-cultural work has yet to emerge. This brief analysis suggests that results are mixed across
cultures and that the findings reported in this review may be specific to North American samples.
Better autobiographical memory?
The previous section described gender differences in terms of how often women and men used
elaborations in their memory narratives, but we did not suggest that one of these tendencies was pre-
ferred to another. In this section, we ask whether differences between men and women in autobio-
graphical memory simply indicate different foci of men and women when recalling their personal
past or if women in fact have superior autobiographical memory abilities. To address this question,
we begin by examining studies of memory for emotion, and then consider evidence relating to other
elements of autobiographical memory. Because research on accuracy in autobiographical memory is
rare, and only one study (Davis, 1999) contains data from children that are relevant to this topic, this
section primarily reviews studies of adults that are relevant to the issue of accuracy in autobiograph-
ical memory.
Recall of emotion
In addition to the studies reported above in which girls and women explicitly use more emotion
language than boys and men when describing their own memories, two studies have found that wo-
men remember emotional information better than men. Davis (1999) conducted a series of experi-
ments to examine closely the role of emotions in autobiographical memories. She presented males
and females, age eight to 16, with cues of specific emotions and asked them to generate as many mem-
ories as possible relating to that emotion in a 4-min time span. Across all emotions and all ages, girls
reported more memories than boys and reported them faster. These effects were then replicated in an
adult population. These findings suggest that when a memory search is focused around emotions, wo-
men and girls show a considerable advantage over men and boys.
In follow-up experiments, Davis (1999) elicited memories of participants’ own emotions and of an-
other person’s emotions, and found that women’s memory advantage over men was consistent in both
scenarios, ruling out the hypothesis that women’s memory advantage only applied to self-focused
events. She then elicited memories with and without emotion cues and asked participants to rate
whether the event described was emotional or non-emotional. Women reported more events rated
as ‘highly emotional’ than men, but similar amounts of non-emotional events. These experiments sug-
gest that women’s advantage on these tasks is specifically connected to emotions and not to memory
in general or to the salience of personal emotional memories. Additionally, Davis (1999) reported that
men displayed similar levels of intensity and a similar range of emotions as women, ruling out the
hypothesis that men don’t experience the same range or intensity of emotions as women. Davis
(1999) concluded that a more elaborative processing of emotion among women creates more associ-
ations in memory and thus more pathways for recall, which accounts both for more memories and
faster recall. This finding is consistent with what the SCDT model would predict: girls are socialized
by their parents to pay closer attention to emotion. Emotion subsequently becomes more integral
to their autobiographical memories than to boys’ memories, and then can be better used as an orga-
nizing feature in a memory search.
Bloise and Johnson (2007) presented college students with one of two fictional scripts of a couple
planning a vacation or a home remodeling. Participants were instructed to read the scripts and some
were told that they would later be asked for advice about what the couple should decide regarding
their remodeling or vacation. Other participants were instructed to pay attention to information rel-
evant for giving the couple relationship advice. A third group was given no instructions regarding
what information to focus on. Bloise and Johnson (2007) found that, in all instructional contexts, wo-
men recalled more emotional information than men. Taken together with Davis (1999), these findings
suggest that women’s tendency to report narratives with more emotion than men reflects not only a
tendency, but a greater ability to recall emotional information. However, it should be noted that these
are only two studies, however well-constructed and executed (Davis, 1999, includes five separate
experiments with 964 total participants). They suggest that the potential exists to build upon the evi-
dence of gender differences in the inclusion of emotion in memory narratives. Future research should
continue the direction of these two studies to better substantiate the claim that gender differences ex-
tend beyond the tendency to report memories differently and include women’s ability to remember
emotional information better than men. This review turns now to studies suggesting a performance
advantage for women in aspect of autobiographical recall other than emotion.
Retrieval speed
Robinson (1976) presented participants with cue words and asked them to report a personal mem-
ory related to that cue word. He found that women responded quicker to this elicitation than men,
suggesting that faster response time is not limited to emotion-specific memories. Similarly, Seidlitz
and Diener (1998) asked participants to recall as many positive and negative life events as possible
in a span of 3 min for each valence (see also Fujita, Diener, & Sandvick, 1991). In this time period, wo-
men recalled more episodes than men, despite using the same amount of words to describe each
event. In addition to being faster at retrieving autobiographical memories, the memories women re-
port are often more detailed than those reported by men. In this set of two experiments, Seidlitz and
Diener (1998) controlled for mood, affective intensity, time of event occurrence, and memory perfor-
mance for historical events. None of these possible covariates accounted for women’s better perfor-
mance, suggesting it is unique to personal events and independent of situational and event-specific
factors.
Vividness
In addition to quicker retrieval times for personal memories, women’s memory narratives have also
been found to be more specific and detailed. Pillemer et al. (2003) interviewed participants, age 68–79,
about their life histories, focusing on changes in the past 15 years. They found that, over the course of a
3-h interview, women included more specific episodes and more specific details than men. Similarly,
Wang, Hou, Tang, and Wiprovnick (2011) found that women provided more specific details than men
in narratives of both past and future events. Hayne and MacDonald (2003) reported that women pro-
vided more details about setting information, people involved, and how they were feeling in narratives
of their earliest memories; men told narratives that were more limited to what happened. In an inter-
esting study that illustrates the effects of this more detailed and specific retelling, Riddle, Potter,
Metzger, Nabi, and Linz (2011) asked participants to recall a violent television show or movie, and
independent raters coded women’s narratives as more vivid than men’s.
As discussed above, some studies have found ways in which participants’ memory ratings and
memory narratives indicate that men do not recall personal events as clearly as women. Pohl et al.
(2005) elicited eleven ‘landmark events’ (eight personal events and three public events from their
lives), and asked participants to rate each event on a five-point scale for the quality of the memory,
ranging from vague to vivid. They found that women rated their own memory quality as more vivid
than men for these events. Similarly, Ross and Holmberg (1990) found that, in recollections of their
first date, last vacation, and a recent argument, women rated their own memories as more vivid than
men, and independent raters of their memory narratives rated women’s narratives as more vivid as
well.
Accuracy
Finally, although tests of accuracy are rare in studies of autobiographical memory (outside of the
eye-witness testimony literature), some studies suggest that females are more accurate in their auto-
biographical memories than males. Peterson (2011) found that when children from 3 to 13 years re-
called a visit to the emergency room a few days, 1 year, and 2 years later, girls at all ages were more
accurate in their recall than were boys. Cleveland and Reese (2008) also found that 5-year-old girls
reported a higher volume of accurate memory information than 5-year-old boys when children were
recalled everyday, non-traumatic events. Yancura and Aldwin (2009) found that men demonstrated
more inconsistency from time 1 to time 2 than women. Thompson, Skowronski, Larsen, and Betz
(1996) conducted four diary studies with college students in which participants made daily entries
of events in their lives, and were later tested on them unexpectedly. In three of the four studies,
women were more accurate than men in reporting the time since the event had occurred. This was
found specifically for self-related events but not for other-related events, and the authors speculate
that because females’ memories were more personally revealing than males’, they remembered them
more accurately. Similarly, the Bloise and Johnson (2007) study reported earlier found that, when
reading a fictional interaction between a husband and wife, women remembered more emotion infor-
mation than men overall, regardless of instructions. Even more relevant to the topic of accuracy,
though, is that when instructed to focus on the neutral elements of the interaction (such as planning
a vacation or remodeling a home) as opposed to the emotional elements, women also remembered the
neutral elements better than men. Additionally, using a regression analysis, and controlling for self-
rated emotional sensitivity (measured using the Social Skills Inventory, a self-report measure of
how attentive participants are to the emotions of others, Riggio, 1986), Bloise and Johnson (2007)
found that the gender effects with regard to emotion were mediated by emotional sensitivity, reduc-
ing gender to a non-significant predictor.
This last finding is especially informative because it suggests a link between women’s tendency to
focus on emotion and their improved recall. First, women’s recall advantage is not uniformly related to
sex, but attention to emotion serves as an individual difference factor that tends to be more present in
women than in men. If women learn to be more attentive to emotion than men, they exhibit better
recall of emotional information. However, men who are just as attentive to emotion show a similar
recall advantage. Second, when they were told to pay attention to the neutral information, they
remembered that information better as well. This second finding suggests that because of differences
in what women and men pay attention to, over time women may develop better autobiographical
memories than men that are not confined to the specific topic to which they are more sensitive.
Early findings suggest that there may be some areas in which women demonstrate better memory
than men. The biggest methodological challenge to this claim is that it is unclear how to define the
term ‘better.’ Vividness, specificity, speed of retrieval, and level of detail have all been included in this
section as measures of better autobiographical memory, but many studies only use one metric and not
others. Controlled studies that accounted for all these factors would be desirable. Additionally, mem-
ory for emotion, the topic that emerges from the earlier section of this review as the one with most
theoretical background to predict a memory advantage for women, is only supported by two studies
so far (Bloise & Johnson, 2007; Davis, 1999). For example, Schulkind, Schoppel, and Scheiderer (2012)
asked men and women about an event shortly after it occurred, and found that women reported ri-
cher, longer, and more evaluative narratives, but that men recalled more factual information.
Schulkind et al.’s (2012) findings suggest that findings should not automatically be interpreted as
an advantage for women over men, but that men may enjoy similar advantages in tasks that favor
their stylistic differences.
Taken together, the data reported in this section suggest there is preliminary evidence that women
demonstrate superior recall for some elements of autobiographical memory. A number of studies have
shown that women recall autobiographical memories faster, report more specific details, are more
accurate, and even rate their own memories as more completely recalled than men do, but at least
one study finds advantages for men with regard to factual information. Further work is necessary
examine these findings in greater detail. In the next section, we compare these results to studies of
episodic memory and consider the source of any possible performance advantage.
Gender differences in episodic memory
Thus far, this review has focused on gender differences in autobiographical memory, but the pos-
sibility remains that they may reflect more general differences in episodic memory ability, or may
even contribute to them. Episodic memory refers to long term memory recalled about something that
can be located in a particular place and time, and that comes with a sense of ‘‘re-experiencing’’ the
event (Tulving, 1985), such as a person’s memory of his eighth birthday party. It is usually contrasted
with semantic memory, which refers to information about which the individual is aware, but is not
accompanied with a feeling of re-experiencing the instance of when the information was learned, such
as a person’s memory of the date of his eighth birthday. The term autobiographical memory can encom-
pass both episodic and semantic memory. The emphasis throughout this review has been on episodic
autobiographical memories, and thus this section analyzes studies of episodic memory for events that
are not considered autobiographical.
In a review of episodic memory findings related to gender, Herlitz, Nilsson, and Backman (1997)
reported a collection of studies that demonstrated episodic memory advantages for women. Types
of tasks reported include word recall (e.g. Bolla-Wilson & Bleecker, 1986), word recognition (e.g.
Temple & Cornish, 1993), story recall (e.g. Hultsch, Masson, & Small, 1991), face and name recall
and recognition (e.g. Hill, Wahlin, Winblad, & Backman, 1995; Larrabee & Crook, 1993), spatial recall
(e.g. Eals & Silverman, 1994), picture recall (Galea & Kimura, 1993), and odor recognition (Lehrner,
1993). In building on this literature, Herlitz and colleagues (Herlitz, Airaksinen, & Nordstrom, 1999;
Herlitz et al., 1997) have demonstrated that women perform better than men on episodic memory
tasks but not on semantic memory tasks.
Gender differences in episodic memory have been found across the lifespan. Kramer, Delis, Kaplan,
O’Donnell, and Prifitera (1997) found that girls between 5 and 16 years old outperformed boys on
immediate and delayed recall, as well as on delayed recognition, despite boys’ slightly higher WISC-
R vocabulary scores. Advantages of a similar magnitude have been found in middle and older adult-
hood on similar tests (Herlitz & Rehnman, 2008), and have been reported in 23 different countries
on episodic memory tasks (Herlitz & Rehnman, 2008).
It has been suggested that women’s performance advantage is linked to their superior verbal skills
(Herlitz & Rehnman, 2008; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974; but see Hyde & Linn, 1988); conversely, men
show a similar advantage on tasks that draw on their superior visual-spatial abilities (Andreano &
Cahill, 2009; Halpern, 2000; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974). Indeed, in a route-finding task, it was found that
men exhibited an episodic memory advantage, but that this advantage was almost entirely negated if
women had access to verbal information that supported performance (Crook, Youngjohn, & Larrabee,
1993). Herlitz and Rehnman (2008) concluded that tasks that are explicitly verbal, or tasks where the
information can be verbally labeled, both show evidence of a memory advantage for women. Thus,
women’s verbal advantage may account for many of the episodic memory effects found. However,
one should not conclude that all gender differences in episodic memory can be reduced to women’s
superior verbal abilities. For example, Lewin and Herlitz (2002) used various manipulations of pictures
of faces to test if women still performed better than men on face recognition with less ability to rely on
verbalization. Thus, faces were presented without hair, ears, or pieces of clothing in some conditions,
and in others, faces were presented in rapid succession to prevent verbalization. Lewin and Herlitz
(2002) found that women still outperformed men on this face recognition task, suggesting that wo-
men’s general episodic memory advantage cannot be reduced to verbal abilities in face recognition.
Similarly, this example raises the question of whether gender differences found in autobiographical
memory reflect broader verbal abilities or, as we suggest, they are indicative of a more specific influ-
ence based on upbringing and autobiographical memory development.
Other explanations of differences in episodic memory have focused on brain differences. However,
an examination of memory tests before and after an anterior temporal lobectomy suggests that the
hippocampus does not play a role in gender differences, as was once suggested (Berenbaum, Baxter,
Seidenberg, & Hermann, 1997). It has recently been suggested that the source of women’s advantage
on episodic memory tasks lies not in some large-scale brain difference but on the more subtle cellular
level (Guillem & Mograss, 2005). Studies have found a higher neuropil volume in the cerebral cortex of
women than in men (De Courten-Myers, 1999; Rabinowicz et al., 2002), meaning that neurons are
packed more densely in women. The results of these studies are consistent with the finding that wo-
men process information with more elaborated detail while men focus more on overall schemas
(Meyers-Levy & Maheswaran, 1991; Meyers-Levy & Tybout, 1989). To test this interpretation, Guillem
and Mograss (2005) predicted that, on a recognition task, men should make more errors due to their
less specific representations, and women should demonstrate higher event-related potentials (ERPs),
consistent with greater recognition (Halgren, 1990). They presented participants with pictures of po-
sitive, negative, and neutral faces while measuring ERPs, and participants were instructed to indicate
whether or not they had seen the face earlier in this activity. Women had both a higher hit rate and
lower false alarm rate on this task and demonstrated higher amplitude ERPs on previously seen items.
The authors interpret these findings to indicate that women maintain more elaborated and specific
processing of stimuli while men engage in more general processing. The findings in this study are
intriguing because they demonstrate an area outside of autobiographical memory that indicates more
elaborative memory processing in women.
This line of research suggest that there are no large-scale differences between men’s and women’s
brains that lead to women’s consistent advantage, but that some of the gender differences found can
be attributed to a more elaborative processing of stimuli by women. Similar findings are reported by
Piefke, Weiss, Markowitsch, and Fink (2005) who instructed participants to think about recent and re-
mote positive and negative events from their lives while an fMRI monitored brain activity. Although
most of the brain regions associated with autobiographical and episodic memory were activated
equally for men and women, men showed more activation in the parahippocampal region, and women
showed more activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and differential activation in the
right insula when recalling remote negative memories. The authors suggested that these differences
reflect different strategies for retrieval of emotional memories. This finding fits with work of Guillem
and Mograss (2005) in that it does not suggest a large-scale difference between men and women, but
suggests that different ways of processing stimuli and thinking about memories can lead to such sub-
tle differences. The findings of Piefke et al. (2005) and Guillem and Mograss (2005) do not directly sup-
port the Social Cultural Developmental Theory model, but they do reflect what it predicts: parents speak
differently to girls and boys about memory. In turn, women develop more elaborative methods than
men of thinking about events, developing different strategies of retrieval, especially for emotional
memories, the factor about which the greatest amount of difference between men and women has
been reported. However, because these studies did not measure parents’ speech to their children, they
only reflect gender differences among participants; attributing these differences to parental speech re-
mains speculative.
Though intriguing, the studies of Guillem and Mograss (2005) and Piefke et al. (2005) do not
represent a totality of the relevant neuropsychological studies of episodic memory. Specifically,
numerous laboratories have reported a relationship between the right, but not the left, amygdala
and long-term retention for emotional material amongst men, but a relationship between the left,
but not the right, amygdala and long-term retention for emotional material amongst women when
viewing negative versus neutral films (Cahill et al., 2001) and pictures (Cahill, Uncapher, Kilpatrick,
Alkire, & Turner, 2004; Canli, Desmond, Zhao, & Gabrieli, 2002; Mackiewicz, Sarinopoulos, Cleven, &
Nitschke, 2006). Furthermore, the relationship between differential amygdala hemisphere lateraliza-
tion in men and women and long-term memory was supported by Cahill and van Stegeren (2003),
who tested the effects of propranolol, a drug known to impair memory, and found that it impaired
men’s memory for global aspects of an arousing event and women’s memory for peripheral details.
Past studies have shown that memory for global details rely more on the right than the left hemi-
sphere, and peripheral details rely more on the left than the right hemisphere (Fink, Marshall,
Halligan, & Dolan, 1999; Fink et al., 1996; Ivry & Robertson, 1998). Taken together these studies pro-
vide strong support for a large-scale neuroanatomical difference between men and women, at least in
the processing of emotionally arousing events.
The overlap in findings between episodic and autobiographical memory raises some intriguing pos-
sibilities. The literature reviewed here raises important questions as to whether gender differences in
elaborative processing contribute to females’ advantage for both autobiographical and episodic mem-
ory. Some studies show gender differences despite no evidence for large-scale brain differences
between men and women; others show specific areas where there are large-scale brain differences,
raising questions as to how far the influence of these differences can be applied. Another important
question to be addressed is whether the differences found, whether on the cellular or larger-scale
level, can emerge as a result of socialization or if they suggest innate differences between men and
women in memory capacity. Future neuroanatomical research should aim towards finding a consen-
sus as to the gender differences present. Future behavioral research on gender differences in autobio-
graphical memory should carefully consider the possible influences of these neuroanatomical
differences on findings.
Gender differences in connectedness to others
A prominent and highly relevant aspect of the construct self in the Self-Memory System is the
degree to which a person considers others as central parts of his or her own memories (Conway &
Pleydell-Pearce, 2000). Specifically, self in the context of the SMS includes how people’s interpersonal
goals influence the way they organize their autobiographical memories through encoding, storage,
and retrieval processes. In the following section, we review data from both children and adults regard-
ing the importance of connections to other people that can have an impact on how interpersonal
events are experienced and recalled.
Affiliation and connectedness to others in children
Gender differences have been observed in the ways in which children interact with peers from an
early age (Rose & Rudolph, 2006). In a comparison of 4-and 6-year-old children, Benenson, Apostoleris,
and Parnass (1997) reported that, at 6 years of age, but not at four, boys are more likely to play in
groups than girls. Conversely, although girls do not play in dyads (as opposed to groups) more fre-
quently than boys, their dyadic interactions are longer those of boys at both ages. Studies have not
tested whether this distinction continues at later ages of childhood (Rose & Rudolph, 2006). Addition-
ally, observational studies have reported that, beginning in middle childhood, girls spend more time in
social conversation than boys (Moller, Hymel, & Rubin, 1992). Boys from pre-school to middle child-
hood more often than girls engage in rough-and-tumble play (Martin & Fabes, 2001), and studies of
children in fourth through sixth grade found that boys were more likely than girls to play sports or
organized games with rules (Moller et al., 1992; Zarbatany, McDougal, & Hymel, 2000). It has been
suggested (Gilligan, 1982; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987) that this structure of interaction contributes to
a female sense of self that has a stronger emphasis on other people and interconnectedness while boys
develop a sense of self that stresses personal achievement and toughness in their role in the group.
This distinction has been referred as a drive for independence amongst men and for interdependence
for women, or agency and communion, respectively (Cross & Madson, 1997; Tannen, 1990).
Studies of autobiographical narratives suggest these differences between girls and boys are ex-
pressed in childhood in that other people play a more prominent role in girls’ narratives than in boys’.
Fivush et al. (2003) analyzed transcripts of conversations between mothers and their 4-year-old chil-
dren about anger, sadness, and fear, and found that girls’ narratives were more interpersonal than
boys’. Kuebli and Fivush (1992) found that, at 40 months of age, girls more often than boys attributed
positive affect to others and more often referred to mutually shared positive feelings in parent–child
conversations about autobiographical events. In mother–child conversations about a typical school
day with 4- and 5-year-olds, mothers more often discussed social interactions with girls and more
about classroom learning with boys (Flannagan & BakerWard, 1996; Flannagan et al., 1995). McGuire
and McGuire (1982) found that, from 7 to 17 years old, when asked to describe themselves, girls used
references to others 50% more than boys. Buckner and Fivush (1998) elicited autobiographical narra-
tives from 7 to 8-year-old children and found that girls’ narratives were more often described as social,
and included more affiliative talk and more references to other people than boys’.
An important element of the Buckner and Fivush (1998) study is the finding that these gender dif-
ferences found in children’s narratives showed no relationship to scores on the social closeness sub-
scale of the Children’s Self-View Questionnaire (CSVQ, Eder, 1990). As discussed earlier in this review,
because the CSVQ relies on children’s explicit ratings of themselves, it is not necessarily assessing the
same construct assessed by narrative measures. The research reviewed thus far suggests that gender
differences have been found primarily in autobiographical memory studies that use narrative mea-
sures as opposed to rating scales, and this finding further supports an approach that views rating
scales and narrative measures as two unique forms of measurement in autobiographical memory.
Affiliation and connectedness to others in adults
This heightened focus on other people amongst females has been found in various contexts with
teens and adults. For example, Clancy and Dollinger (1993) asked participants to compile a set of pic-
tures that describe them, and found that women included more pictures of themselves with family
members than men. In Ickes, Robertson, Tooke, and Teng’s (1986) study, participants waited in a lobby
with a confederate and were unknowingly videotaped. During the recorded 5-min interaction, women
demonstrated more social bodily actions than men, such as turning to the confederate, gazing, closer
interpersonal distance, or verbally reinforcing. Similarly, when watching this videotape, female partic-
ipants reported a greater number of thoughts, and more positive thoughts and feelings about their
conversational partner. Finally, in college students’ descriptions of their undesired self, 90% of women
included relationships with others, compared to only 30% of men (Ogilvie & Clark, 1992).
Findings from autobiographical memory research reflect this more interdependent focus in wo-
men’s memories. For example, McAdams et al. (2006) presented college students with the Guided
Autobiography, a task that requires participants to write narratives pertaining to ten different aspects
of their lives. These narratives were rated for themes of agency and communion, and women scored
higher than men on communion, though there were no differences in ratings of agency. Similarly,
Niedzwienska (2003) elicited flashbulb memories from Polish adults age 45–60, and found that wo-
men’s flashbulb memories included more mention of other people and received higher communion
scores than men’s. Walls, Sperling, and Weber (2001) elicited positive and negative memories of child-
hood from more than 500 undergraduate students, and found that women more often wrote about
boy–girl relationships, friends, and parties, while men more often wrote about sports, fights, misbe-
havior, and school. Thorne and McLean (2002) found that, in narratives of life-threatening experiences,
women were more likely to write about the deaths of loved ones while men were more likely to write
about accidents; men’s narratives were coded as expressing more toughness and existential awe (de-
fined as ‘‘fascination or awe in the face of death,’’ Thorne & McLean, 2002), whereas women’s were
coded as expressing more compassion. In interviews about interpersonal relationships, Thorne
(1995) found that women reported more memories about parents and siblings, while men reported
more memories about teachers and employers. Although these studies do not demonstrate a system-
atic analysis of the topic, they do lend insight into the interpersonal content of men’s and women’s
memories. Thorne and McLean’s (2002) results indicate that women’s memories more often stressed
close relationships than men’s; Thorne’s (1995) findings show that men include supervisory and
achievement-orientated relationships (teachers and employers) as interpersonal, whereas women
are more likely to refer to family relationships, which are less dependent on a common goal and more
likely to simply reflect communal orientation. Similarly, Walls et al.’s (2001) findings demonstrate
that, when simply asked to describe a positive or negative memory, men’s memories included plenty
of other people (sports, fights, school, misbehavior), but women discussed events in which interper-
sonal relationships play a more central role (friends, boy–girl relationships, parties). If these studies
are an indication that women report events in which social interactions with other people are more
central, gender differences in autobiographical memory may emerge either because women pay more
attention than men to the social elements of events or because their experiences more often included
social interactions.
Differences in connectedness to others also influence the purposes for which men and women re-
tell their autobiographical memories to others. Pillemer et al. (2003) administered the Reminiscence
Functions Scale to adults (age 68–79) and found that women self-reported that they told their mem-
ories to others for the sake of identity and intimacy maintenance more often than men. Alea and Bluck
(2007) asked participants in long-term relationships to recall a personal romantic event, and found
that, although men and women in this study did not differ on measures of intimacy and warmth, wo-
men’s (but not men’s) rated feelings of closeness to their romantic partner rose after recalling the
autobiographical event. Additionally, correlations were found between women’s (but not men’s)
self-report of closeness and how often this event was rehearsed, suggesting that women’s rehearsal
of these memories may contribute to their sense of intimacy, while men’s rehearsal may not.
Interpersonal goals in adolescence
A study by McLean and Breen (2009) provides additional evidence that gender differences in the
role of interpersonal aspects may influence autobiographical memory. In a study of adolescents’
(age 14–18) turning point memory narratives, there were no differences found between experiment-
ers’ ratings of girls’ and boys’ personal meaning (statements in the narratives that convey connections
between the event and the self) or in the relational content expressed in their narratives. The authors
interpreted these results to indicate that, at this age, relationships are very salient to both boys and
girls, which explains the lack of difference found in relational content, a topic addressed later in this
review. However, a regression analysis of emotional tone, self-esteem, and whether stories with a neg-
ative beginning ended with a positive note (redemptive sequence) found that redemptive sequence
was a better predictor of self-esteem than emotional tone for boys, while emotional tone was the bet-
ter predictor for girls (McLean & Breen, 2009). The authors suggested that boys’ self-esteem was re-
lated to their sense of agency which was reflected in redemptive narratives where they overcame
some negative starting point. In contrast, girls’ narratives focused on relationships and their self-es-
teem was related to positive memories of relationships.
Because interpersonal relationships are of paramount importance to both sexes during adolescence
(Youniss & Smollar, 1985), the salience of relationships masks gender differences that may be common
at other ages. However, although gender differences were more subtle, and when they were found on
dimensions of agency and communion, they were related to self-esteem measures. Consistent with
the SMS model (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000), these findings indicate that differences in adoles-
cent boys’ and girls’ interpersonal goals (i.e. boys are more driven toward agency and girls are more
driven toward positive relationships) are related to whether relationship memories support a positive
sense of self.
We have argued that the relationship between self and autobiographical memory is bi-directional;
the reconstructive process of autobiographical recall is organized by one’s sense of self and the self is
influenced by the memories that are recalled. Many studies using a variety of methodologies find evi-
dence that men and women differ in the emphasis that is placed on relationships with other people,
and these differences are reflected in their autobiographical memory narratives. Additionally, studies
with children report similar findings, raising the possibility that adult gender differences are estab-
lished in childhood although there is not yet longitudinal evidence to support this claim. Research
showing that narrating events involving other people differentially relates to how men and women
maintain intimacy and strengthen self-esteem supports the view that autobiographical recall influ-
ences the self, as outlined in the SMS.
Although the results presented in this section demonstrate promising possibilities of connections
between self and memory, they do not explain the mechanism through which gender differences
emerge. Do women narrate events differently than men because of their heightened attention to inter-
personal relationships, or do the different contexts that they tend to seek out lead to more interper-
sonal experiences for women? The former suggests a gender difference in how reality is perceived, but
the latter simply implies different narrations because of different experiences. Additionally, as found
throughout our review, the results presented in this section need to be approached cautiously, as each
study used a difference measure. Autobiographical memory is a field that prides itself on finding eco-
logically valid means of testing hypotheses, but this leads to a lack of systematization in findings re-
ported, which raises questions when looking at them as a whole. Many of the studies reported here did
not set out to study gender, but simply reported it as additional information in the course of research.
Thus, research on gender differences would greatly benefit from studies that set examining gender dif-
ferences as a priority, and examined multiple methods in a more systematic way.
Developmental and contextual influences
The research reviewed thus far suggests two ways that gender differences in autobiographical mem-
ory may develop. First, girls and women tend to include more elaborations than boys and men, espe-
cially about emotion in their narratives, and this tendency may be linked to the way parents speak to
boys and girls differently. Second, research indicates that females’ tend to place greater emphasis on
interpersonal relationships in autobiographical memory. Neither of these differences suggests that fe-
males have certain skills that males do not have access to; rather, they suggest tendencies or differences
in the focus and motivation of these memories. In cases where gender differences are not apparent, two
possibilities arise: either females place less of an emphasis on the elaborative or interpersonal elements
of a narrative (i.e. similar to males) or males place a greater emphasis on these elements (i.e. similar to
females). It is also possible that gender differences are more or less apparent at certain time periods in
the lifespan. We next consider contextual and developmental factors that can render the elaborative or
interpersonal elements of a narrative more salient for males, reducing or eliminating gender differences.
Situational influences
When participants are explicitly directed to report pivotal events from their lives, males and
females tend to recall these events in a similar fashion. For example, several studies have found no
evidence of gender differences when reporting self-defining memories (SDMs), which consist of mem-
ories that are more than 1 year old, that are especially vivid, emotionally intense, thought about often,
and conveys crucial information about a person’s identity (Singer & Salovey, 1993). McLean (2005)
found that men more often than women told SDM stories for entertainment, but that most people told
these memories to others for the sake of self-explanation, and no gender differences were found in
how often this was the main purpose of telling. Additionally, no gender differences were found in
how often these memories were told, the number of people told, or in the meaning derived from these
memories. Thorne and McLean (2002) found that men and women tell equal amounts of life-threat-
ening, relationship, agency-, and leisure-focused events when asked to report SDM’s, and McLean and
Thorne (2003) found no differences in use of relationship themes, conflict themes, separation and
closeness, and meaning making in SDM’s.
Similarly, studies of turning point memories often report no gender differences in the quality of re-
call. In turning point memories, participants are asked to describe an episode in which they experi-
enced an important change (McAdams et al., 2006; Pillemer, 1998). Analysis of turning point
memories focuses on elements of meaning making present in memory narratives as well as emotional
content. Meaning making refers to ways in which people derive meaning from personal memories,
such as by noting connections between the event and various characteristics of the self, or by referring
to lessons and insights that were gained from the event (McLean, 2005). In several studies of adoles-
cent turning point memories, no gender differences were found for these measures (Grysman &
Hudson, 2010; McLean & Breen, 2009; McLean & Pratt, 2006).
The lack of gender differences found when reporting turning points and SDM’s may seem to chal-
lenge the model of gender differences reviewed in this paper. Given that autobiographical memory has
been defined here as the intersection between self and memory, and that turning points and SDM’s are
memories where the self is highly salient, one might expect that these memories would be an elicita-
tion context in which gender differences should be most apparent, rather than least, as is the case.
However, it may be that the instructions to focus on self-relevant memories in these elicitation con-
texts eliminate gender differences by explicitly directing males to focus on the kind of information
that they tend not to report without instruction. That is, the instructions lead males to focus more
on the self than they otherwise would in an autobiographical narrative. Participants are instructed
not only to report the event, but to think of its implications for the rest of their lives. When the sense
of self is highlighted in this way, male participants focus on the sense of self as instructed, thereby
eliminating gender differences that exist in the way they tell everyday autobiographical memories.
It should be noted here that self-relevance should not be conflated with independence, the opposite
of interdependence (also referred to as relational). In the preceding section, it was noted that women’s
stories are often more relational than men’s, but this does not mean that they are less focused on the
self. By this we mean that women include more references to others in their concept of self and their
narratives that are most relevant to their sense of self. Men’s self-relevant memories tend to focus
more on their own independence or agency, and women’s on interdependence or communion (e.g.
Gergen & Gergen, 1993; Sehulster, 1981), but this feature is independent of how self-relevant a nar-
rative is.
For example, Grysman and Hudson (2011) found no gender differences in college students’ use of
action statements, elaborative statements (including emotions), orientation statements, and self-pro-
nouns in turning point narratives. Similarly, Rice and Pasupathi (2010) instructed participants to
narrate an event they viewed as self-consistent or self-discrepant, and found no gender differences
in use of causal and insight language or connections made between events and their implications
for the self. In narratives of turning points and crises, Pasupathi and Mansour (2006) found no differ-
ences in self-event connections. In a study of participants’ narratives of a career change or change in
religion, Bauer and McAdams (2004) found no gender differences in integrative themes, growth
themes in participants’ narratives.
These results regarding narratives of pivotal events, such as turning point, self-defining memories,
self-consistent, and self-discrepant events suggest that certain contexts of elicitation can limit gender
differences. The model proposed here suggests that gender differences in autobiographical memory
narratives reflect ways in which women learn to narrate events differently than men, such that wo-
men tend to be more elaborative than men in their narratives by reporting more of their thoughts
and feelings, or by expressing more of an interpersonal self-definition. In spontaneous autobiograph-

ical recall, women tend to include more details about other people than men and will elaborate more
about thoughts and feelings. However, when men are asked directly to be self-reflective, as they are in
turning point and self-defining memories, they do so in ways that include as much self-evaluation as
women. A recent study involving adolescents’ narratives further illustrates the impact of context and
elicitation instruction.
Fivush, Bohanek, and Zaman (2011) report a study in which 14–16-year-old adolescents told sto-
ries of their parents’ childhood experiences and of their own. They found that girls’ narratives were
highly correlated with the narratives they told of their mothers’, but not their fathers’, experiences
on almost every narrative variable measured (elaborative detail, focus on affiliation or achievement,
use of cognitive and affective state words). This finding suggests that, in their own personal narratives,
these girls imitated the style in which their mothers tell stories. In contrast, boys wrote narratives of
their mothers’ experiences that included many elaborations, but used significantly fewer elaborations
in narratives of their own experiences. In addition, there was no relationship between boys’ narratives
of their own experiences and narratives they told of either parent.
These findings suggest that boys, and later men, are entirely capable of telling narratives full of
elaborations and self-reflective content, as they do when re-telling their mothers’ stories, but they
do not employ these capabilities when telling their own stories in all contexts. When telling their
mothers’ narratives, boys included elaborative content. Presumably, these are details that their moth-
ers stressed, and so the sons re-told those narratives with the information that was presented as
important. We interpret this finding as indicating that, for their own narratives, boys did not consider
internal states – their own or others’ – as central to the narrative, and so they didn’t include as many of
these details. Females may consider the elaborative elements of memory narratives, such as thinking
states, emotions, and the narrator’s interpretations, to be a more integral part of the average narrative
than males do. Males, in turn, only focus on these elements when they consider them an important
part of the narrative.
Men’s more limited use of elaborations, when apparent, may not be due to competence factors, but
to contextual factors. Fivush et al.’s (2011) data suggest that males elaborate in situations that they
consider elaborative information relevant, in this case, a story previously told with somebody else’s
elaborations, and many of the other studies suggest that men are equally as self-referential as women
when narrating explicitly self-relevant memories. Similarly, Reese and Fivush (1993) found no differ-
ences in the amount of elaborations provided by mothers and fathers, but did find differences in the
amount of elaboration provided by parents of daughters when compared to parents on sons, suggest-
ing that both mothers and fathers are capable of using elaborations in memory talk with their chil-
dren, but that both use this tendency differently in different contexts. This leads us to consider
other situational factors that may enhance or diminish the differences between men and women.
Additional studies have demonstrated that the way men tell their personal narratives can be influ-
enced by the social context in which these narratives are elicited. Aukett, Ritchie, and Mill (1988)
administered a questionnaire of participants’ behaviors with same- and opposite-sex friends. They
found that women report that they disclose more personal information than men and are not affected
by conversational partner. However, men report that they provide as much emotional and personal
information as women when conversing with intimate female partners. Similarly, Clark (1994) pre-
sented children from fourth to tenth grade with hypothetical situations and asked them to think of
someone their own age they would want to speak to about the situations. Younger children predom-
inantly preferred to speak with the same sex about most topics, but eighth and tenth grade boys pre-
ferred a female listener when disclosing personal information. Men’s memory narratives are also
influenced by the presence of other people in the elicitation context, even if they are not speaking
to them directly. Cvasa (2007) found that men made fewer self-references when a male experimenter
was present than when he was absent. Men also wrote shorter memory narratives when other partic-
ipants were in the room than when they wrote alone; neither the number of other participants nor the
presence of the experimenter affected women’s narratives.
These studies suggest that, despite differences between men and women in some studies of auto-
biographical memory, these differences can be minimized in certain contexts. When simply asked to
relate a personal memory, men are less likely to include some of the elaborative and self-referential
aspects of a narrative that often characterize gender differences. However, men provide more of this
information when relating somebody else’s experience, when conversing with an intimate female
partner, when writing alone, and when asked specifically about self-relevant topics. Because men have
been found to use these elements of a narrative as often as women in specific contexts, it would seem
that men tend to engage less in elaborative and self-referential narrative construction, but will do so
when circumstances lead them to. This tendency may contribute to the more general style of remem-
bering that is displayed in many recall contexts. We want to stress that this tendency reflects a pre-
dominant mode of responding and narrating, but does not preclude the ability to produce a more
elaborative and self-referential memory narrative when conditions encourage it. We now turn to
age-based differences as an extension of this contextual approach by viewing different ages and stages
of life as times when gender is more salient and may contribute to more pronounced gender
differences.
Gender differences at different ages
Not only do gender differences vary across contexts, they also vary across ages. Studies with ado-
lescents and adults have found less consistent gender differences than studies of children’s autobio-
graphical memory (e.g. Buckner, 2000). Fivush and Buckner (2003) explain this discrepancy in
terms of the salience of gender to identity at different ages. During middle childhood, gender is a very
salient factor in children’s day-to-day interaction. Girls and boys exhibit different styles of playing
(Rose & Rudolph, 2006) and gender segregation reaches a peak (Maccoby, 1988). Similarly, at this
age, boys and girls have an especially rigid concept of gender, and hold strong gender stereotypes
(Signorella, Bigler, & Liben, 1993). In college, the lens of gender is overshadowed by the goal of identity
formation, as both males and females are concerned with establishing a stable self as they plan their
futures (Erikson, 1968). Although gender remains an essential part of college students’ identities, it is
only one part of a complex sense of self, including personality characteristics, achievement motiva-
tions, plans for the future, and personal ideology.
Gender can become more important to identity in later years. Research on family narratives has
shown that mothers and fathers participate differently in memory conversations. Fivush, Marin,
McWilliams, and Bohanek (2009) recorded family conversations and reported that mothers contrib-
uted more factual and emotional elaborations to conversations than fathers. Similarly, Fiese and
Bickham (2004) found that mothers were more likely than fathers to tell their children stories with
an affiliation theme with other family members, while fathers were more likely to tell stories about
work. Nussbaum and Bettini (1994) reported that grandfathers more often told their grandchildren
stories that stressed the value of life and survival, while grandmothers more often told stories about
relationships and about how the family developed. Additionally, McLean (2008) found gender differ-
ences in reports of self-defining memories in older adults (ages 65–85), but not college students; older
women reported more coherent narratives and included more references to cognitions and self-reflec-
tions in their narratives than older men did. Finally, when younger adults (age 23–30) and older adults
(age 57–80) were instructed to retrieve memories in response to positive and negative emotion cue
words, older women retrieved more memories than older men, but no gender differences were found
for younger adults (Ros & Latorre, 2010).
One interpretation of these findings is that gender differences are less consistent in the college
years than in childhood, but re-emerge in adulthood, often in family conversation contexts (Fivush
& Buckner, 2003). However, our review has presented results from a large number of studies that doc-
ument gender differences in college- and teenage participants (e.g. Bloise & Johnson, 2007; Davis,
1999; McLean & Breen, 2009; Wang et al., 2011). More research is needed to clarify exactly what influ-
ence age has on gender effects, but the research discussed thus far suggests that context and method-
ology have a greater impact than age. The influence of age (or developmental status) on gender
differences is intertwined with the methods and contexts used.
Support for this view comes from Deaux and Major’s (1987) review of gender-related social behav-
ior, that takes into account age factors relating to how they affect the individual, but notes that age is
not the only factor involved. They focus their theoretical model on the display of gender differences,
and explain that, whether or not gender differences will be evident in a given context depends on
the individual, the audience, or the situation (see also Gubrium & Holstein, 1998). For example, college
students are more likely to mention their sex as part of a self-description when their sex is in the
minority of a group (Cota & Dion, 1986). Similarly, the death of a spouse or loss of a job may highlight
a person’s gender roles in the family context, making him or her more aware of gender (Spence, 1984,
1985). Thus, because of one’s developmental status or life events, gender may play a greater or lesser
role in one’s sense of self, which would then heighten or reduce awareness of gender-related
characteristics.
Conclusions and future directions
Our review of gender differences in autobiographical memory research indicates that although dif-
ferences are not found in all studies, numerous studies do indicate gender differences in the ways in
which autobiographical memories are narrated. When differences are evident, females, as compared
to males, refer to emotions more often when relating personal memories, tend to tell memory narra-
tives that include more specific details, and are more accurate in their recall of events. Females also
report more interdependent memory narratives, either through the focus of the narrative or the pur-
pose for which it is told. Differences in elaboration and in connectedness to others are found at early
ages and continue into adulthood. Additionally, women’s superior episodic recall suggests that more
elaborative processing may underlie their advantage in both autobiographical and episodic memory.
What is the source of these differences? In this review, we have discussed the development of
autobiographical memory in conjunction with the sense of self, and the influence of parent–child con-
versations. Evidence suggests that parents speak differently to girls and boys and that girls develop a
more interpersonal sense of self in their early years; these factors may influence what type of infor-
mation children, and subsequently adults, focus on when recalling personal events. However, firm
conclusions cannot be drawn before controlled experiments and longitudinal studies clarify the link
between parental behavior and children’s subsequent performance, and between children’s narratives
and those of the adults they grow to become.
Gender differences in parent–child conversations most likely reflect social norms and expectations
that are communicated to children, both explicitly and implicitly, in a variety of contexts and interac-
tive experiences with parents, peers, other adults, and the broader culture (Gilligan, 1982; Maccoby &
Jacklin, 1974, 1987; Maccoby & Martin, 1983). Although parent–child conversations are not the only
factor that contributes to gender differences, Nelson and Fivush (2004) proposed that the ways in
which parents, especially mothers, elicit autobiographical memories from their children, and the ways
in which they elaborate on the information provided by their children help children extract personal
meaning from past events. By guiding children’s autobiographical reasoning (Habermas & Bluck,
2000), parents scaffold the development of a coherent autobiography and sense of self. Because differ-
ences in how parents talk to boys and girls about past experiences mirror gender differences in adult
autobiographical memory narratives, the SCDT approach (Nelson & Fivush, 2004) provides an attrac-
tive model for conceptualizing the origins of gender differences in adult autobiographical memory.
Our review is also grounded in the SMS (Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000), which stresses the role
of the sense of self in organizing memory. We have explored the ways in which women’s sense of self
is often more relational than men’s, and how men often emphasize agency in their sense of self. These
differences have natural consequences, and we have explored the different roles of other people in
men’s and women’s autobiographical memories. We suggest that women’s greater emphasis on other
people leads them to be more concerned with internal states than men, resulting in narratives that
stress the roles of other people and what they are thinking and feeling.
Effects of methodology and context
It is also apparent that methodology strongly influences the expression of gender differences in
autobiographical memory. Our review found that gender differences in autobiographical memory
are present primarily, though not exclusively, in studies that use narrative measures. We have sug-
gested that gender differences in narrative construction reflect a mode of thinking and not simply a
way of speaking, providing an assessment of memory quality in a way that is distinct from rating scale
measures. Because autobiographical memory involves a bi-directional interaction between self and
memory, narrative analysis reflects the ways participants interpret and evaluate their experiences,
integrating self with memory processes. Rating scales reflect participants’ opinions about events
and their memories for them. Even in studies using narrative measures, methodological features, such
as specific instructions given to participants, can influence memory narratives. For example, more
elaborative elements can be elicited from men when instructions are explicitly self-focused, thereby
eliminating gender differences in elaboration.
Context can also influence whether gender differences are apparent. Because autobiographical
memory involves narrating personal experiences, the interpersonal context of recounting these expe-
riences can enhance or overshadow gender differences in autobiographical memory narratives. Fac-
tors including the number and gender of people present during recounting can change the way a
person narrates an autobiographical memory. The salience of gender in relation to the developmental
status of participants may also play a role. Age of the participants at the time of recounting or at the
time of the experience can influence the degree to which one’s gender is viewed as integral to the
event recalled.
Effects of methodology and context address the issue of how to approach inconsistencies in gender
differences reported in the literature. It is possible that stable, gender-related differences are only cap-
tured with the appropriate methodology and context; conversely, it is possible that inconsistencies in
gender differences reflect random fluctuations rather than an actual effect. We have argued that stud-
ies that do not find gender differences can be explained in terms of methodological or contextual fac-
tors, but more research in this area must be conducted to directly address this possibility. Specifically,
studies must be designed that directly examine gender, methods, and context, instead of the common
practice in which gender is reported as a peripheral factor whenever results of interest are found.
Performance or competence differences?
Consideration of methodological and contextual influences also raises the issue of whether gender
differences in autobiographical memory reflect performance or competence differences. A case could
be made for both. On the one hand, although their tendency is to tell narratives with fewer elabora-
tions on the emotional and interpersonal aspects of a memory as compared to women, men may not
lack the ability to include these narrative elements. On the other hand, the tendency for women to
assume a more interpretive stance in their personal memories, over time, may contribute to more
elaborative processing of experience that can enhance episodic memory in general.
Our review builds on the SCDT model (Nelson & Fivush, 2004) of how experiences in early parent–
child reminiscence begin a process that may lead to gender differences in adult autobiographical
memory. Parents tend to elicit more elaborative and emotional recall from girls than from boys. Com-
bined with other social influences emphasizing a more interpersonal focus, girls develop a more elab-
orative recall style. Taking this model one step further, we propose that this more elaborative way of
representing events may enhance females’ autobiographical and episodic memory processing. The
cumulative effect of more elaborative thinking and talking about the past over several years of devel-
opment may yield competence differences in elaborative processing. Competence differences may
underlie women’s superior performance in the autobiographical and episodic memory tasks reviewed
above. Thus, stylistic differences emerging in childhood can lead to more substantive differences in
later years.
Directions for future research
Several lines of research are necessary to provide support for this model. First, we urge researchers
to include gender as a factor in their analyses of autobiographical memory data whenever possible. As
our review indicates, it is important to document when gender differences are not found as well as
when they are present in order to fully understand the role of gender in autobiographical memory.
More importantly, more studies are needed that examine gender directly and not as a peripheral
factor. Gender effects can be directly investigated by systematically varying instructions or contexts
and by using multiple measures.
Furthermore, to establish the developmental roots of gender differences, more longitudinal (e.g.
Jack et al., 2009; Reese et al., 2010) and experimental studies are needed to examine individual differ-
ences from early childhood into adulthood. For example, Boland, Haden, and Ornstein (2003) trained
mothers to ask elaborative questions and other conversational techniques to enhance memory when
discussing an event with their children. They found an effect of training on memory at 1-day and 3-
week intervals, but it should be noted that the elaborative questioning mothers employed in this study
was more extensive than is normally found in mother–child interactions. It is not always possible or
ethical, however, to train specific styles of reminiscence. Cross-cultural research presents an opportu-
nity to identify cultural groups in which parents differ in how they co-construct past events with their
male and female children, and then to examine gender differences later in life. As we discussed, early
research indicates that this is a promising enterprise, and more research of this kind should be con-
ducted where possible.
Another method of future research pertains to the contextual influence on gender differences dis-
cussed above. Studies should clearly indicate the gender of the experimenter and the context in which
personal memory narratives are reported. An 18-year-old male may react very differently to an inter-
view about his life story with a female experimenter, and may report different narratives, or at least
report them differently, if he is around others. To test the effects of context, future studies should vary
the gender of the experimenter and the context of remembering, as Cvasa (2007) has done. Varying
the gender of the experimenter would be especially useful in teenage and adult participants, rather
than in young children. Furthermore, we discussed how gender differences are mitigated when
men are told to explicitly report self-relevant events, and are more likely to be self-expressive in these
scenarios. This claim should be explored further by creating experimental contexts meant to make
participants less elaborative and self-revealing, such as by giving them a length constraint in their
memory narratives. If gender differences are also mitigated in this way because women report mem-
ories in a less elaborative way, these results would further support a contextual model of gender dif-
ferences. Additionally, as Bloise and Johnson (2007) demonstrated, gender is not the only factor to
measure, as participants may adhere more or less to gender stereotypes. Thus, measures of gender
normativity or of agency and communion should be used in future research to better understand
the source of gender differences, when present.
Finally, the similarities between episodic and autobiographical memory are compelling, and war-
rant future research to more closely study connections between different types of memory. Future
studies should consider presenting participants with both episodic memory tasks and autobiograph-
ical memory tasks to see if differences emerge consistently in both domains. Similarly, studies of when
gender differences emerge in both studies would be valuable, especially if they found that differences
emerged at similar ages.
This review has examined the role of gender in the development of autobiographical memory.
Although they have emerged inconsistently in autobiographical memory experiments, gender differ-
ences present an important factor in understanding the interrelationship of self and memory and how
autobiographical memory is influenced by social, developmental, and methodological factors across
the lifespan. Greater attention to these differences in future research can aid a deeper understanding
of autobiographical memory and its development.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the reviewers whose helpful comments have contributed to this
review.
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Developmental Review 33 (2013) 239–272

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

Gender differences in autobiographical memory:

Article history: Gender differences have surfaced in inconsistent ways in autobio-

Deﬁning autobiographical memory and its development

The Self Memory System

Social cultural development of autobiographical memory

Gender differences in elaboration

We begin our review of gender differences in autobiographical memory by examining differences

Gender differences in parent–child memory conversations

Why are parents more elaborative with girls?

Gender differences in children’s memory narratives

Gender differences in adults’ memory narratives

Can rating scales measure elaboration?

Other methodological concerns

Do gender differences vary cross-culturally?

Better autobiographical memory?

Gender differences in episodic memory

Gender differences in connectedness to others

Afﬁliation and connectedness to others in children

Afﬁliation and connectedness to others in adults

Interpersonal goals in adolescence

Developmental and contextual inﬂuences

and feelings, or by expressing more of an interpersonal self-deﬁnition. In spontaneous autobiograph-

Gender differences at different ages

Conclusions and future directions

Effects of methodology and context

Performance or competence differences?

Directions for future research

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