An article co-authored by Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Azriel Grysman and Amelia Denney ’17 was recently published in the journal Memory. “Gender, experimenter gender and medium of report influence the content of autobiographical memory report” reported the results of a study in which they examined the role of context in autobiographical memory narratives, specifically as it pertains to gender among emerging adults.
In the study, male and female participants were asked to report stressful events in their lives to an experimenter. Two context manipulations were used: the report method – verbal or typed, and the gender of the experimenter.
Among the results, Grysman and Denney found that when verbally reporting to women, men’s narratives were longer than for any other context. They also noted that women’s narrative length did not vary by medium of report or conversational partner, but women used proportionally fewer internal state phrases when verbally reporting to men than when reporting to women.
Grysman and Denney concluded that their findings highlight the importance of methodological influences in autobiographical memory studies, in regard to both the context generated by experimental methods, and how gender differences are understood.
Memory publishes high quality papers in all areas of memory research, including experimental studies of memory (including laboratory-based research, everyday memory studies, and applied memory research), developmental, educational, neuropsychological, clinical and social research on memory.
