Journal
PERSPECTIVES ON PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE
Volume 18, Issue 1, Pages 67-90Publisher
SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD
DOI: 10.1177/17456916221082116
Keywords
verbal ability; phonemic fluency; semantic fluency; verbal memory; age; author effects
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Women have a slight advantage in verbal abilities, particularly in phonemic fluency and recall. The gender difference in semantic fluency and recognition appears to be category-dependent. Published articles report stronger female advantages, and first authors believe their own gender performs better.
Women are thought to fare better in verbal abilities, especially in verbal-fluency and verbal-memory tasks. However, the last meta-analysis on sex/gender differences in verbal fluency dates from 1988. Although verbal memory has only recently been investigated meta-analytically, a comprehensive meta-analysis is lacking that focuses on verbal memory as it is typically assessed, for example, in neuropsychological settings. On the basis of 496 effect sizes and 355,173 participants, in the current meta-analysis, we found that women/girls outperformed men/boys in phonemic fluency (ds = 0.12-0.13) but not in semantic fluency (ds = 0.01-0.02), for which the sex/gender difference appeared to be category-dependent. Women/girls also outperformed men/boys in recall (d = 0.28) and recognition (ds = 0.12-0.17). Although effect sizes are small, the female advantage was relatively stable over the past 50 years and across lifetime. Published articles reported stronger female advantages than unpublished studies, and first authors reported better performance for members of their own sex/gender. We conclude that a small female advantage in phonemic fluency, recall, and recognition exists and is partly subject to publication bias. Considerable variance suggests further contributing factors, such as participants' language and country/region.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available