Gender differences in autobiographical narratives: He shoots and scores; she evaluates and interprets

Abstract

Research on autobiographical narratives consistently demonstrates that whereas women's narratives emphasize evaluative information, men's narratives are factually oriented. These narrative differences might reflect gender differences in either the autobiographical knowledge base or the way information from the knowledge base is selected when a narrative is constructed. The present experiment evaluated these two (potentially complementary) hypotheses by assessing memory soon after an event and after a period of 6 weeks, using both open-ended (narrative) and factually oriented (questionnaire) measures. Consistent with past literature, women told longer, richer, more evaluative narratives than did men. However, men recalled more factual information both initially and after 6 weeks and also constructed narratives that were more factually oriented. These data suggest that men and women value factual information differently and that these differences influence both the contents of the autobiographical knowledge base and the way that information in the knowledge base is used to construct personal narratives.

Prescribed journeys through life: Cultural differences in mental time travel between Middle Easterners and Scandinavians

“…Middle Eastern women rated their events as more specific and generated longer narratives compared with Middle Eastern men in both time orientations. This is in accordance with previous studies showing stylistic differences in narration of memories with women telling and writing longer narratives than men (Fivush et al, 2011;Schulkind, Schoppel, & Scheiderer, 2012). Also it supports studies showing that women tend to generate longer, more detailed and more specific narratives of personal events (Hayne & MacDonald, 2003;Herlitz & Rehnman, 2008;Pillemer, Wink, DiDonato, & Sanborn, 2003;Ross & Holmberg, 1990;Wang et al, 2011).…”

The Role of Sex in Memory Function: Considerations and Recommendations in the Context of Exercise

“…Some evidence indicates that the right hemisphere is biased toward processing the “gist” of memories, whereas the left hemisphere is biased toward finer detailed processing [ 35 , 36 ]. This, however, it not uniformly supported, as, although females recall longer, richer, and more evaluative narratives for autobiographical memories, males have been shown to recall more factual information [ 37 ]. Particularly with regard to autobiographic memories, parent–child reminiscence practices may partially explain the observed sex differences, as mothers tend to reminisce more elaborately and discuss emotional events in greater detail with their daughters when compared to their sons [ 38 ].…”

Linguistic markers of autism in girls: evidence of a “blended phenotype” during storytelling

“…In contrast, we found that reliance on cognitive processing words differed by sex in ASD, such that cognitive process word production was significantly reduced in autistic males only . Diminished internal state language, including cognitive process words, has been interpreted as reflecting Theory of Mind impairments in ASD [9, 59], but prior studies rarely included sufficient numbers of girls to assess whether typical sex differences in social cognition [23, 93] and narratives [77, 97] persist in autistic boys and girls separately. Our finding, that cognitive process word deficits during storytelling are largely specific to males with ASD, suggests that historical reliance on predominantly male samples may have led to generalizations about narration in ASD that do not apply to girls (although this study still includes a smaller sample of girls than boys, and warrants replication).…”

“…Parental narratives directed at girls include more references to emotions and internal states than narratives directed toward boys [43]. Subsequently, girls tell narratives that are distinct from boys’ narratives [12, 17, 67], including longer narratives that are more emotionally laden and more likely to reference others’ internal states [77, 97]. However, it is largely unknown whether the narratives of boys and girls with ASD also differ from one another.…”

“…Specifically, we expect that autistic children will produce more nouns (labels for objects or characters) in their narrations compared to TD children. Second, given population sex differences in the production of cognitive process words during narrations [77, 97] and emerging research suggesting that autistic girls produce more of these words than autistic boys across a variety of tasks, including narratives [45, 55], we expect a main effect of sex on cognitive process words, such that girls use more cognitive process words than boys. Finally, consistent with prior research showing an inverse relationship between autism symptoms and mentalizing words [98], we hypothesized that cognitive word use would negatively correlate with social impairment across the sample as a whole.…”