Sex differences in recollective experience for olfactory and verbal information

We examined recollective experience as a function of sex for olfactory and verbal information. In the first study, men and women studied a set of highly familiar odors with incidental or intentional encoding instructions. In the second study, participants were presented with a number of sentences. At recognition, participants indicated whether their positive response was based on conscious recollection (remembering), a feeling of familiarity (knowing), or guessing. The results indicated that recollection was higher among women than men, and that familiarity-based recognition was equally large across sex for both types of information. The finding that the sex-related experiential difference disappeared when controlling for verbal proficiency suggests that sex-related differences in activating verbal information play an important role for sex differences in recollective experience. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.