In middle age, women remember, men don’t

It’s been an endless source of aggravation between the sexes; how can men so easily forget birthdays, anniversaries, and even friends’ names?

It’s been an endless source of aggravation between the sexes; how can men so easily forget birthdays, anniversaries, and even friends’ names?

HT Image

Not, it seems, because they cannot be bothered to remember. Research suggests that, in middle age at least, absent-minded-ness is a particularly male problem.

At the age of 50, women’s verbal memory outperforms their male counterparts by a significant margin, a report by the Institute of Education, University of London suggests.

A survey of more than 9,600 middle-aged British men and women showed that women outscored men in two listening and recollection tests.

“Men performed significantly more poorly in the verbal memory tests: particularly on the delayed memory test,” the authors, Matthew Brown and Brian Dodgeon, said.

“This was quite a surprising result, since women turning 50 tend to do worse: another study has shown that during the menopause women do not do so well.”