DOES GENDER AFFECT MEMORY?
Erica Wolfgram
Purpose Statement:
The purpose of this experiment is to determine if gender affects memory. I became interested in this experiment because I want to be a teacher when I grow up, and that would be really helpful information to know about. The information gained from this experiment will help others learn more about gender differences and memory.
Research:
According to the website “Gender Differences”, males and females are different in many ways. Males brains are bigger, but females brains grow faster. New studies tell us the environment that our parents create for us, has the greatest impact on the way we learn and how we learn. The Hippocampus is in the brain and it is where memory and language lives. It does develop more rapidly and is larger in females than males. This impacts vocabulary, reading, and writing skills. Males have more spatial relationships in their brain. As a result, they learn easily through movement and visual experience. However there is a very little gap between what females and males can learn.
According to the article from “Multiplying Connections”, differences between males and females brains can help us to understand why teenage males and females often have different learning styles and behavioral patterns. Females have more matter in their brain that contains more memory, decision making, and emotions. Males have more matter that contains how to transfer information throughout the brain. This can bring out young males spatial skills, such as navigation and solving math problems.
HYPOTHESIS:
Materials:
Timer
Five females
Five males
Piece of paper with fifteen different objects on it.
DV:Memory
IV:Gender
Constants: The objects on the paper will be the same for females and males. Also, the time they look at the objects will stay the same.
Procedures:
1. Take one person at a time and have them look at the paper of objects for fifteen seconds.
2. Take the paper away from them and ask them to tell you all of the objects they remember from the paper.
3. Record how many objects they remember and if they were female or male.
4. Repeat step one, two, and three for each person.Log/Data:
Results:
The original purpose of this experiment was to determine if gender affects memory. The results of the experiment were gender affects memory. Females remembered more than males.
Conclusion:
My hypothesis was gender will affect memory. The results indicate this hypothesis should be considered correct. Based on the results of this experiment, you might have to tell males more than once to remember something. If I were to conduct this science fair project again, I would test different age groups of females and males.