Do Men Show More Rapid Age-Associated Decline in Simulated Everyday Verbal Memory Than Do Women?

Recent magnetic resonance imaging data suggest that men show more rapid age-associated atrophy of the left hemisphere than do women. To investigate whether a similar pattern occurs for functional decline, the authors tested 417 male-female pairs, ages 17-79 years and matched perfectly on age and edu...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Psychology and aging 1993-03, Vol.8 (1), p.68-71
Main Authors: Larrabee, Glenn J, Crook, Thomas H
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adolescent
Adult
Adult. Elderly
Age Differences
Aged
Aging - psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Developmental psychology
Dominance, Cerebral
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Gender Identity
Human
Human Sex Differences
Humans
Male
Memory
Mental Recall
Middle Aged
Neuropsychological Tests
Paired-Associate Learning
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Retention (Psychology)
Verbal Learning
Verbal Stimuli
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recent magnetic resonance imaging data suggest that men show more rapid age-associated atrophy of the left hemisphere than do women. To investigate whether a similar pattern occurs for functional decline, the authors tested 417 male-female pairs, ages 17-79 years and matched perfectly on age and education, on 3 computer-stimulated everyday verbal memory tests: Name-Face Association, First-Last Name Associate Learning, and Grocery List Selective Reminding. Age and gender significantly predicted performance on all 3 tests. By contrast, only 1 of 15 Age × Gender interactions was significant, accounting for merely 1% of the test variance. These data suggest that although gender-based differences in rate of left-hemisphere structural decline may occur with normal aging, these apparently do not translate into differential functional decline in simulated everyday verbal memory.
ISSN:0882-7974
1939-1498
DOI:10.1037/0882-7974.8.1.68