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. 2019 Apr 22;14(4):e0214945.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0214945. eCollection 2019.

The magnitude of sex differences in verbal episodic memory increases with social progress: Data from 54 countries across 40 years

Martin Asperholm  1 , Sanket Nagar  2 , Serhiy Dekhtyar  3 , Agneta Herlitz  1
Affiliations

The magnitude of sex differences in verbal episodic memory increases with social progress: Data from 54 countries across 40 years

Martin Asperholm et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Sex differences in episodic memory have been reported. We investigate (1) the existence of sex differences in verbal and other episodic memory tasks in 54 countries, and (2) the association between the time- and country-specific social progress indicators (a) female to male ratio in education and labor force participation, (b) population education and employment, and (c) GDP per capita, and magnitude of sex differences in verbal episodic memory tasks. Data were retrieved from 612 studies, published 1973-2013. Results showed that females outperformed (Cohen's d > 0) males in verbal (42 out of 45 countries) and other (28 out of 45 countries) episodic memory tasks. Although all three social progress indicators were, separately, positively associated with the female advantage in verbal episodic memory performance, only population education and employment remained significant when considering the social indicators together. Results suggest that women's verbal episodic memory performance benefits more than men's from education and employment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Effect size estimates for each country for both task categories.
Forest plot describing the variation in sex differences in (a) Verbal and (b) Other episodic memory tasks across the (a) 45 and (b) 45 countries used in the analyses, with k = number of studies available for each country. Cohen’s d (unfilled circles) is presented on the x-axis, with error bars describing the 95% confidence intervals (notice that some error bars have been truncated). Filled circles indicate the year each study was carried out.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Scatterplots for the three simple effects analyses.
Indicator of (a) Gender equality, (b) Population Education and Employment, (c) GDP per Capita (x-axis) plotted against sex differences in Verbal episodic memory performance (y-axis). The diameter of each data point is equal to the inverse of its squared variance. The lines indicate the best-fitting regressions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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