Gender affects word retrieval of certain categories in semantic fluency tasks

Recent studies suggest that gender influences phonetically-cued fluency and some semantic memory tasks. In this study we analysed the effect of demogr aphic variables on semantic fluency tasks. The semantic categories consider ed were: animals, fruits, tools and vehicles. The influence of age and educ ation was common to all the categories considered and seems a general chara cteristic of the semantic fluency task. Gender had a significant effect onl y with fruits and tools, but a diverging role: females fared better with fr uits and males with tools. We discuss whether the source of the gender effe ct should be located at the level of the semantic representation of each ca tegory or at the level of item recall in the short time (one minute) grante d for the task.