When it comes to smarts, women are catching up to men in some areas and outpacing them in others, new research has found.
In particular, women, on average, are better than men at so-called episodic memory, which involves recalling and describing experiences and facts, while men's edge over women in numerical abilities has narrowed somewhat. The findings were drawn from a large study of older people from 13 different European countries.
Overall, humans have gotten smarter through time. That cognitive leap is thanks largely to better health, education and living conditions, the new study finds.
"When living conditions increase over time, so do cognitive abilities both for men and women, and that has been shown previously," said study co-author Agneta Herlitz, a psychologist at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. "But we show that women's cognitive abilities increase more than men's."
Culture or nature?