Melissa Dahl

Recently, I was visiting my family in Seattle, and we were doing that thing families do: retelling old stories. As we talked, a common theme emerged1. emerge: 出現(xiàn)。. My brother hardly remembered anything from our childhood, even the stories in which he was the star player2. star player: 主角。. (That time he fell down the basement steps and needed stitches in the ER?3. basement: 地下室；stitch: 縫合；ER: emergency room，急診室。Nope. That panicky4. panicky: 恐慌的，害怕的。afternoon when we all thought he’d disappeared, only to discover he’d been hiding in his room, and then fell asleep? Nothing.) “Boys never remember anything,” my mom huffed5. huff: 氣鼓鼓地說。.

She’s right. Researchers are finding some preliminary evidence that women are indeed better at recalling memories, especially autobiographical ones.6. preliminary: 初步的；autobiographical: 自傳性的。Girls and women tend to recall these memories faster and with more specific details, and some studies have demonstrated that these memories tend to be more accurate,too, when compared to those of boys and men. And there’s an explanation for this: It could come down to the way parents talk to their daughters, as compared to their sons, when the children are developing memory skills.

To understand this apparent gender divide in recalling memories,7. apparent: 明顯的；divide: 差異，差別。it helps to start with early childhood—specifically, ages two to six. Whether you knew it or not, during these years, you learned how to form memories, and researchers believe this happens mostly through conversations with others, primarily8our parents.These conversations teach us how to tell our own stories, essentially;when a mother asks her child for more details about something that happened that day in school, for example, she is implicitly communicating that these extra details are essential parts to the story.9. essentially: 本質(zhì)上，基本上，后半句中essential意為“重要的，必需的”；implicitly: 含蓄地。

女孩們，你們有沒有這樣的體會，男友總是記不住你們的各種紀(jì)念日，而當(dāng)你想回憶往日的甜蜜時光時，他卻好像從未經(jīng)歷過一樣……你忍不住懷疑：他的記憶是不是被人偷走了？抑或這是所有男人的通病呢？或許他們在這方面真的沒有天賦啊。

And these early experiments in storytelling assist in memorymaking, research shows. One recent study tracked preschool-age kids whose mothers often asked them to elaborate when telling stories; later in their lives, these kids were able to recall earlier memories than their peers whose mothers hadn’t asked for those extra details.10. track: 追蹤；elaborate: 詳細(xì)闡述；peer: 同齡人。

But the way parents tend to talk to their sons is different from the way they talk to their daughters.Mothers tend to introduce more snippets11. snippet: 片段。of new information in conversations with their young daughters than they do with their young sons, research has shown.And moms tend to ask more questions about girls’emotions; with boys, on the other hand, they spend more time talking about what they should do with those feelings.

This is at least partially a product of parents acting on gender expectations they may not even realize they have,and the results are potentially longlasting, explained Azriel Grysman, a psychologist at Hamilton College who studies gender differences and memory.12. psychologist: 心理學(xué)家；Hamilton College: 漢密爾頓學(xué)院，美國一所私立學(xué)院?！癟he message that girls are getting is that talking about your feelings is part of describing an event,” Grysman said. “And for boys,emotions are something to be concerned with when they are part of a larger issue, but otherwise not. And it’s quite possible, over time, that those tendencies will help women establish more connections in their brains of different pieces of an event, which will lead to better memory long-term.”13.“女孩學(xué)到的是在描述事情時加入自己的感受，”格萊斯曼說，“而對于男孩子來說，除非遇見更大的事情，否則情緒就并不是那么重要。并且隨著時間的推移，女性更有可能在大腦中將一件事的不同片段聯(lián)系起來，這將有助于她們的長期記憶。”

Because a memory doesn’t exist the way we tend to imagine it; it’s not a singular14. singular: 單獨的。, fully formed thing buried in some small corner of the mind. Instead, it’s “a pattern of mental activity, and the more entry points we have to what that pattern might be, the more chances we have to retrieve it,”15. 相反，它是“心理活動的一種模式，對于這種模式，我們有越多的切入點，重獲記憶的機會就越大?！眅ntry point: 切入點；retrieve: 重獲。Grysman said. Researchers call those entry points “retrieval cues,” and they can be as seemingly mundane as what you were feeling,16. retrieval cue: 回想提示，提取線索；mundane: 平凡的。what you were eating, or what you were wearing.

The more entry points you’ve got about an event, the more likely you are to remember it. It’s how Grysman advises his students to study for tests. “I tell them to try to make links between the material they’re studying and other parts of their lives, and those other parts of their lives serve as entry points,” he said.

So Grysman’s theory, which he explored in an extensive review of the literature published last year, is that those early conversations with your parents implicitly told you which details are important to remember about the things that happen to you,and which are not.17. 因此，格萊斯曼在研究了大量去年出版的文獻后得出的結(jié)論就是：你早期跟父母的對話暗示了哪些細(xì)節(jié)對于記住發(fā)生的事來說是重要的，哪些是不重要的。extensive: 大量的，廣泛的。And because parents’ conversations with girls include references to both more information and more emotion,they’re setting their daughters up to have stronger memories over their lives. (Though it’s worth pointing out: Grysman acknowledges in his 2013 paper that gender identity is of course much more complicated than biological sex, and not every individual’s experience is going to mirror that of the children in the research on which he’s based his theory.18. 但值得注意的是：格萊斯曼在他2013年發(fā)表的論文中承認(rèn)，性別認(rèn)同比生理性別要復(fù)雜得多，而且并非每個個體都與其理論研究的對象有相同的經(jīng)歷。gender identity: 性別認(rèn)同；mirror: v. 與……相似。)

At this point in our conversation, I couldn’t help asking Grysman how his own memory is. “I thought I had a great memory until I got married,” he said. “Now, I’m realizing more and more how much I don’t remember, compared to somebody else. Dates, facts, figures—I’m great at those things. But those are things where we don’t find gender differences. I can quote you the Stanley Cup19. Stanley Cup: 斯坦利杯，國家冰球聯(lián)盟的最高獎項。winners back from 1914, but I can’t remember conversations.”

And that’s actually how he became interested in studying gender difference in autobiographical memory recall in the first place. Several years ago, his wife referenced some recent,important conversation they’d apparently had with a friend. He had no memory of it. “That’s really what spurred20. spur: 刺激，激勵。this,” he said.So I asked him if he remembered now what that conversation was about.

“I don’t,” he admitted, “and maybe that proves the point.”