| 1. |
- Asperholm, Martin
(författare)
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Investigating and explaining sex differences in episodic memory
- 2020
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Sex differences can be seen in a lot of different areas, one of them being cognition where, among other things, men tend to perform better at more spatial tasks and women at more verbal. When it comes to episodic memory — the memory for past events in terms of the what, where, and when — there has been some circumstantial evidence of sex differences. In Study I of this thesis, we performed a meta-analysis on mean sex differences in episodic memory, using a dataset of 617 studies, totaling over one million subjects. This dataset consisted both of published and unpublished data, as well as several open databases. Here, the main finding was that, just like with other cognitive tasks, males tend to perform better on more spatial tasks while females tend to perform better on more verbal tasks. It could also be shown that females performed better when remembering faces, as well as tasks having to do with smell, touch, and different shades of colors. Further, it has been shown that males tend to be more variable than females for a lot of different traits, both biological and psychological. Even if men, on a group level, usually have larger variance when it comes to cognition in general, there is less support for saying anything about episodic memory. In Study II of this thesis, we performed a number of analyses on a somewhat reduced version of the dataset gathered in Study I, searching for variance differences between males and females. Here, there were some evidence showing that males were slightly more variable than females. However, through exploratory investigations we also found results suggesting that this pattern potentially could come about because of underlying methodological problems in the original research. Finally, there have been some large-scale studies suggesting that when it comes to improvements in cognition, women tend to benefit more than men from social progress and increased living conditions in a society. There has also been some evidence for this relationship when it comes to episodic memory. In Study III, we expanded upon these findings by examining the dataset gathered in Study I, which comprises more countries and a larger timeframe than any other investigation on this topic. Here, we could show that for verbal episodic memory, sex differences were related to several different indicators of living conditions tied to the year and country of each study. However, when pitted against each other, it was only the overall education and employment level that could be shown to be related to the outcome and not gender equality, which we expected would be the most important indicator. In this thesis, I first present a comprehensive background on the topics presented above, including some in-depth, possible explanations for why things are the way they are from evolutionary, biological, and social perspectives. I then go through the dataset that all three studies are based on, as well as present the result from them, including some of my own interpretations. Finally, I discuss some general themes that relate to the studies performed, including necessary choices when collecting data for meta-analyses, possible bias in the dataset, and statistical considerations when dealing with dependent data.
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| 2. |
- Asperholm, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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The magnitude of sex differences in verbal episodic memory increases with social progress : Data from 54 countries across 40 years
- 2019
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 14:4
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)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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| 3. |
- Asperholm, Martin, et al.
(författare)
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What Did You Do Yesterday? A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Episodic Memory
- 2019
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Ingår i: Psychological bulletin. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0033-2909 .- 1939-1455. ; 145:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- To remember what one did yesterday is an example of an everyday episodic memory task, in which a female advantage has sometimes been reported. Here, we quantify the impact of sex on episodic memory performance and investigate whether the magnitude of the sex difference is modified by study-, task-, and sample-specific moderators. Analyses were based on 617 studies conducted between 1973 and 2013 with 1,233,921 participants. A 5-level random-effects meta-analysis showed an overall female advantage in episodic memory (g = 0.19, 95% CI [0.17, 0.21]). The material to be remembered affected the magnitude of this advantage, with a female advantage for more verbal tasks, such as words, sentences, and prose (g = 0.28, 95% CI [0.25, 0.30]), nameable images (g = 0.16, 95% CI [0.11, 0.22]), and locations (g = 0.16, 95% CI [0.11, 0.21]). and a male advantage in more spatial tasks, such as abstract images (g = -0.20, 95% CI [-0.35, -0.05]) and routes (g = -0.24, 95% CI (-0.35, -0.12]). Furthermore, there was a female advantage for materials that cannot easily be placed along the verbal-spatial continuum, such as faces (g = 0.26, 95% CI [0.20, 0.33]), and odor, taste, and color (g = 0.37, 95% CI [0.18, 0.55]). These differences have remained stable since 1973. For verbal episodic memory tasks, differences were larger in Europe, North America, Oceania. and South America than in Asia, and smaller in childhood and old age than for other ages. Taken together. results suggest that men may use their spatial advantage in spatially demanding episodic memory tasks, whereas women do well in episodic memory tasks that are verbalizable and tasks that are neither verbal nor spatial, such as remembering faces and odors/tastes/colors.
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| 4. |
- Cortes, Diana, et al.
(författare)
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Intranasal Oxytocin and Response Inhibition in Young and Older Adults
- 2017
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In normal aging, people are confronted with impairment in both socioemotional and cognitive abilities. Specifically, there are age-related declines in inhibitory processes that regulate attention towards irrelevant material. In last years, the intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin has mainly been related to improvements in several domains such as emotion recognition and memory, but to date the effects of oxytocin in aging remain largely unknown. In a randomized, double blind, placebo controlled, within-subjects study design, we investigated whether oxytocin facilitates inhibitory processing in older adults compared to younger adults. In total, 41 older adults (51% women; age range 65-75 years) and 37 younger adults (49% women; age range 20-30 years) participated in this study two times, receiving a single intranasal dose of 40 IU of placebo and oxytocin in randomized order 45 minutes before engaging in the task. Participants were tested approximately a month apart and mostly at the same hour during both occasions. Inhibition was measured with a Go/NoGo task which included happy and neutral faces as targets (Go stimuli) and distractors (NoGo stimuli) shown on a computer screen. Participants were instructed to press a button any time they saw a target and remain passive when encountering a distractor. Preliminary results indicate effects for happy and neutral faces, but only in the distractor condition. For happy distractors, women rejected correctly happy faces more accurately than men did, both in the placebo and oxytocin conditions. A main effect of age was observed for the neutral distractors, where older adults were more successful in inhibiting responses than younger adults during oxytocin and placebo treatments. We did not observe effects of oxytocin in the different tasks. The role of oxytocin was not clear distinguished in the tasks. In sum, our findings showed that age and gender can influence inhibition but their effects depend on the displayed emotions. This suggests that the ability to inhibit interfering distractors may remain intact despite of age and that deficits in inhibition may be selective. The role of oxytocin in inhibition needs to be further investigated since it is possible that it is context dependent.
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| 5. |
- Helander, Maria, et al.
(författare)
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The Efficacy of Parent Management Training With or Without Involving the Child in the Treatment Among Children with Clinical Levels of Disruptive Behavior : A Meta-analysis
- 2024
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Ingår i: Child Psychiatry and Human Development. - : Springer Nature. - 0009-398X .- 1573-3327. ; 55, s. 164-181
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted where we evaluated the effects of Parent Management Training (PMT), Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) and PMT combined with child cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) using data from 25 RCTs on children with clinical levels of disruptive behavior (age range 2–13 years). Results showed that PMT (g = 0.64 [95% CI 0.42, 0.86]) and PCIT (g = 1.22 [95% CI 0.75, 1.69]) were more effective than waiting-list (WL) in reducing parent-rated disruptive behavior, and PMT also in improving parental skills (g = 0.83 [95% CI 0.67, 0.98]) and child social skills (g = 0.49 [95% CI 0.30, 0.68]). PCIT versus WL had larger effects in reducing disruptive behavior than PMT versus WL. In the few studies found, the addition of child CBT to PMT did not yield larger effects than PMT or WL. These results support offering PMT to children with clinical levels of disruptive behavior and highlight the additional benefits of PCIT for younger ages.
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| 6. |
- Rennels, Jennifer L, et al.
(författare)
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Caregiving experience and its relation to perceptual narrowing of face gender
- 2017
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Ingår i: Developmental Psychology. - : American Psychological Association (APA). - 0012-1649 .- 1939-0599. ; 53:8, s. 1437-1446
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This research examined whether infants tested longitudinally at 10, 14, and 16 months of age (N = 58) showed evidence of perceptual narrowing based on face gender (better discrimination of female than male faces) and whether changes in caregiving experience longitudinally predicted changes in infants' discrimination of male faces. To test face discrimination, infants participated in familiarization/novelty preference tasks and visual search tasks including female and male faces. At each age of participation, they were coded as having a female primary caregiver only or distributed caregiving experience (alternating experience with a female and male primary caregiver). Perceptual narrowing was evident for infants with a female primary caregiver, but only within the visual search task, which required location of a familiarized face among 3 novel distractor faces (exemplar-based discrimination); it was not evident within the familiarity/novelty preference task, which required discrimination between a familiarized and novel face (individual-based discrimination). Caregiving experience significantly explained individual changes in infants' ability to locate male faces during the visual search task after 10 months. These data are the first to demonstrate flexibility of the face processing system in relation to gender discrimination when there is a change in caregiver within the infants' natural environment after perceptual narrowing normally manifests.
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