MEMORY, 2008, 16 (4), 395
409

Remembering talk: Individual and gender differences in

reported speech

Richard Ely
Boston University, MA, USA

Elizabeth Ryan
The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

This study examined individual and group differences in the nature and frequency of reports of past
speech in the autobiographical memories of young adults. A sample of 108 participants (60 females,
48 males) responded in writing to six memory prompts. They also completed the Five Factor Inventory
(Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Spence & Helmreich, 1978). The
frequency with which participants used reported speech was correlated with agreeableness, openness, and
expressivity; however, regression analyses indicated that narrators’ gender alone was the best predictor.
Females used more reported speech than did males. The findings suggest that recollections of past speech
are an under-appreciated yet important component of autobiographical memory.

Recent work has explored how personality vari-
ables as well as gender are associated with
differences in the processes and content of auto-
biographical memory (e.g., Bauer, Stennes, &
Haight, 2003; Blagov & Singer, 2004; Roberts,
Carlos, & Kashdan, 2006; Rubin, Schrauf, &
Greenberg, 2003; Rubin & Siegler, 2004). The
current study continues in this tradition by
examining individual and group differences in
an understudied component of autobiographical
memory: reported speech. Although much atten-
tion has been devoted to elucidating the role
visual imagery plays in autobiographical memory
(Rubin & Greenberg, 2003), far less has been
devoted to aural imagery in general, and spoken
language specifically (Campos & Alonso-Quec-
uty, 2006). This neglect is somewhat surprising in
that language is unique to humans and, as a highly
social species, human interactions are largely
mediated through language (Dunbar, 2004; To-
masello, 2003). Given the role language plays in
human experience, we would expect that accounts
of verbal exchanges should figure prominently in
autobiographical memories. Furthermore, de-
scriptions of past speech, as vehicles for rich
evaluative commentary (Labov, 1972), may con-
tribute to the vividness with which events are
recalled. In this study we explored the possibility
that individual differences in the traits of extra-
version, openness, agreeableness, and expressiv-
ity, affect ratings of autobiographical memories,
discourse style, and verbal aptitude, and gender
itself might be associated with differences in
memories of past speech. We also sought to
generate a more complete picture of the place
of reported speech in autobiographical memory
than currently exists.
In using reported speech, a speaker makes
explicit reference to a speech event. Reported
speech is typically classified on the basis of form
and falls into three categories: direct, indirect,
and narratised (Genette, 1988). In direct speech

Address correspondence to: Richard Ely, Department of Psychology, Boston University, 64 Cummington Street, Boston, MA
02215, USA. E-mail: rely@bu.edu

# 2008 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business
http://www.psypress.com/memory DOI:10.1080/09658210801949869
396 ELY AND RYAN
(I screamed, ‘‘I hate you, get away from me’’),1 the
speaker purports to represent the original utter-
ance, although the validity of such a representa-
tion is questionable (Neisser, 1981). Direct speech
is analogous to Neisser’s (1981) notion of verba-
tim recall. Indirect speech (. . . he said he got a
knife with him) is similar to what Neisser (1981)
has referred to as gist, where the sense of what
was once said is expressed in different words.
Finally, narratised speech (Matt cracked a joke
about my game ability) describes a speech event
in summary form, often through the use of a wide
array of speech verbs and nouns that categorise
the nature of the original speech event (e.g., chat,
criticise, explain). Although a narratised report
may add additional information (e.g., addressee,
topic), it masks the specific content of the original
utterance.
The three forms of reported speech fall along a
continuum of vividness that is, we believe, re-
flected implicitly in the scale Rubin and collea-
gues use to assess imagery in memories (Rubin
et al., 2003; Rubin & Siegler, 2004). As part of
their Autobiographical Memory Questionnaire,
participants are asked to rate the degree to which,
as they remember the event, ‘‘[they] or other
people are talking’’ on a scale running from ‘‘not
at all’’ through ‘‘vaguely’’ and ‘‘distinctly’’ to ‘‘as
clearly as if it were happening right now’’. We
would argue that narratised reports (We chattered
quickly) are analogous to the lower end of the
scale, being somewhat ‘‘vague’’ in their particu-
lars. Indirect reports (he told me not to go back)
are certainly more distinct, reflecting the gist of
what was said, and direct reports (He whispered
in my ear, ‘‘I love you’’), as ‘‘primary’’ sources,
can feel as if they are taking place in the
immediate (Holt, 2000).
Given the potential import of reported speech,
we wanted to explore the possible origins of
individual differences in its use. Some evidence
for associations between individual differences in
the incidence of reported speech and personality
traits comes from the work of Rubin and Siegler
(2004). Specifically, they found positive correla-
tions between the degree to which participants
rated the vividness of conversation in personal
memories and the traits of extraversion, agree-
ableness, and openness, .28, .18, and .20, respec-
tively, all significant at the pB.05 level (N118).
Although these findings could have been due to
1
Unless otherwise noted, examples come from the data
gathered for the current study.
chance (given the large number of correlations
the authors ran), the correlation for the warmth
subscale of extraversion was highly significant
and is line with the authors’ contention that
‘‘people who spend more time in conversation
and who find it more enjoyable should have more
conversation as part of their autobiographical
memories’’ (Rubin & Siegler, 2004, p. 920).
Explanations for the other two correlations are
admittedly more speculative, but could be indir-
ectly related to the degree to which openness and
agreeableness are associated with dispositions
towards interpersonal interaction and under-
standing (Botwin, Buss, & Shackelford, 1997;
Jensen-Campbell & Graziano, 2001; McCrae,
1996). The same reasoning holds true for the trait
of expressivity. Expressivity is said to be a
significant part of the stereotypically female
communal mode (Spence, 1991), where females
are seen as being focused on relationships and are
more integrated into family and community than
are males (Bakan, 1966; Cross & Madson, 1997;
McAdams, 1988).
There is a large literature focusing on the
relationship between affect and autobiographical
memory (Levine & Pizarro, 2004). However, to
our knowledge, little work to date has examined
specifically the relationship between affect and
reported speech in autobiographical memories.
We speculated that there would be a correlation
between the affect ratings of memories and the
incidence of reported speech. This speculation
flows in part from a qualitative appreciation of
the current data. However, this prediction is also
based on the memorable statement and memory
for speech research (reviewed below) and clinical
observation in which participants and clients
report that memorable utterances often had
long-term personal impact, impact that presum-
ably was affectively charged (Hermans, Kempen,
& van Loon, 1992; Knapp, Stohl, & Reardon,
1981).
These data point to the meta-representational
nature of reported speech. Citing past speech is a
way of giving evaluative voice to the past verbal
thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of the self and,
more importantly, others (Goldsmith & Pillemer,
1988; Keenan, MacWhinney, & Mayhew, 1977;
Labov, 1972; MacWhinney, Keenan, & Reinke,
1982). As the examples in the Discussion section
demonstrate, these representations often embody
critical judgements and, as such, appear to be
associated with a greater degree of affect. This
interpretation is supported by the high positive

correlation, r(50).62, Rubin and colleagues
reported between the vividness ratings of the
presence of talk and the intensity of felt emotions
in autobiographical memories, a correlation com-
parable to that between visual imagery and felt
emotions (Rubin et al., 2003, Table 3, p. 891).
In addition to assessing reported speech in
autobiographical memories, we examined partici-
pants’ propensity to produce reported speech in
the absence of any memory load by assessing the
use of reported speech in a Thematic Appercep-
tion Test (TAT) story. This allowed us to deter-
mine if individual and group differences in
reported speech reflected a general narrative
style that affected all story-like discourse, or was
more particular and specific to autobiographical
memories. For example, if the salience of re-
ported speech in autobiographical memories is
mediated by a generic interest in all forms of
conversational discourse (both real and ima-
gined), the incidence of reported speech in TAT
stories would likely be associated with that in
autobiographical memories. Finally, it may be that
memory for speech is associated with general
verbal ability. In this study, we used the verbal
portion of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT)
as a broad measure of verbal aptitude.
Gender differences in reported speech are
likely to be secondary to more general gender
differences in memory. There are well-documen-
ted differences in verbal memory tasks with
females consistently outperforming males, and
this is especially true for tasks involving episodic
memory (Herlitz, Nilsson, & Bäckman, 1997;
Herlitz & Yonker, 2002; Lewin, Wolgers, &
Herlitz, 2001). In memory for both everyday
and dramatic experiences, females are more
focused on interpersonal interactions than are
males (Niedźwieńska, 2003; Sehulster, 1995). For
example, Buckner and Fivush (1998) found that
girls’ personal narratives focused more on affilia-
tion, while boys’ centred on mastery and perfor-
mance. Similarly, in a study of young children’s
personal narratives, girls included more themes of
communion than did boys (Ely, Melzi, Hadge, &
McCabe, 1998). Women’s memories about past
relationships are also more vivid than those of
men (Acitelli & Holmberg, 1993), and, in general,
women’s memory styles are characterised by
greater specificity (Pillemer, Wink, DiDonato, &
Sanborn, 2003).
In this regard it is interesting to note that
women’s self-ratings of memory accuracy for
conversation are higher than those of men
REMEMBERING TALK 397
(Crawford, Herrmann, Holdsworth, Randall, &
Robbins, 1989; Loftus, Banaji, Schooler, & Foster,
1987). Indirect support for these claims of greater
accuracy comes from a series of studies focused
on child and parent
child discourse (Ely, Glea-
son, & McCabe, 1996; Ely, Gleason, Narasimhan,
& McCabe, 1995; Ely & McCabe, 1993; for a
review see Ely & McCabe, 1996). This work
found that females report more past speech than
do males, and when using reported speech fe-
males are more likely to offer a sense of what was
actually said by using direct and indirect speech
more than males.
Although not empirically tested outside
parent
child contexts, gender differences in re-
ported speech have been hinted at in other work
(Johnstone, 1993; Tannen, 1990). For example,
Johnstone (1993, p. 73) maintained that ‘‘[p]eople
in the women’s stories . . . sit around and talk;
people in the men’s stories are more often . . .
silent’’. To support her claim, she provided
descriptive statistics on a corpus of 58 adult
narratives of personal experience. Reported
speech was found in 60% of men’s stories and
73% of female stories; furthermore, the propor-
tion of transcript lines containing reported speech
was 8% for men’s stories versus 12% for women’s
stories.2
There are a variety of not mutually exclusive
theoretical perspectives that could explain gender
differences in the frequency of reported speech,
including those that point to biological and social
factors. Sex differences in brain organisation
(Persinger & Richard, 1995) and hormones are
argued to play a role in women’s superior
performance in episodic memory tasks (Jacobs
et al., 1998; Wolf & Kirschbaum, 2002; but see
Yonker, Eriksson, Nilsson, & Herlitz, 2003, for
negative evidence). From a social perspective,
women’s traditional role as caretakers and com-
municators (Valian, 1998) suggest that remembe-
ring past speech may be subordinate to remem-
bering more about interpersonal interactions in
general and the language that supports such
interactions in particular. Existing evidence in-
dicates that gender-specific socialisation is
2
Narrative length can affect the likelihood of finding a
single instance of reported speech. Johnstone does not report
data on the length of the narratives she analysed. The
examples she cites suggest that they were likely, on average,
longer than the individual memory reports analysed here, but
shorter than our (within-participant) pooled autobiographical
discourse.
398 ELY AND RYAN
pervasive, with girls more than boys being en-
couraged to focus on relationships, emotions, and
communication in their reminiscing (Bauer et al.,
2003; Ely et al., 1996; Fivush, Haden, & Reese,
2006; Reese, 2002).
We turn now to look more broadly at the place
of reported speech in autobiographical memory.
There is a small body of literature that has looked
at memories for specific speech events. Knapp
and colleagues (1981) collected data on single,
significant, ‘‘memorable messages’’. Memorable
messages were typically rule structured (if-then)
prescriptive statements (If you want a relationship
to work . . . you have to work at it, p. 31) that had
long-term, generally positive effects on recipients.
Verbatim recall was rated as ‘‘very certain’’ by
71% of participants. Goldsmith and Pillemer
(1988) assessed a somewhat similar corpus of
remembered statements from a range of remem-
bered speakers (e.g., unspecified, parent, teacher,
and peer). They also found a relatively high
degree of confidence in verbatim recall. Overall,
nearly half of all statements were personal in
nature, either reflecting the speaker’s feelings,
attitudes, or wishes, or his or her evaluation of the
listener (participant). A relatively small propor-
tion of statements (between 8% and 36%) dated
from more than 1 year in the past.
There is a much larger literature that addresses
the capacity and validity of memory for past
conversation. These data, collected in both la-
boratory and naturalistic settings, suggest that
recall is poor after intervals as short as 5 minutes,
with one study reporting a recollection rate as low
as 10% (Stafford & Daly, 1984). However others
(e.g., Ling & Coombe’s 2005 adult sample) report
higher rates of recall (51
53%) after a period of 1
week. In general, gist recall is better than
verbatim recall (Bruck, Ceci, & Francoeur, 1999;
Campos & Alonso-Quecuty, 2006; Neisser, 1981),
and personal and unusual comments are better
remembered than are impersonal and mundane
comments (Keenan et al., 1977; MacWhinney
et al., 1982). Some data indicate that speakers
remember more of what they themselves have
said than what their partners have said (Miller, de
Winstanley, & Carey, 1996; Wagner, 1984). How-
ever, other data suggest that recollections of
speech of the self are no more frequent than
recollections of speech of others (Hyman &
Neisser, 1992).
In this study our first goal was to explore
individual and group differences in reported
speech. Based on the literature reviewed earlier,
we anticipated that the frequency of accounts of
past speech events would be positively associated
with the traits of extraversion, agreeableness,
openness, and expressivity. We also predicted
that there would be significant correlations be-
tween affect ratings and the frequency of re-
ported speech. Finally, we wanted to rule out as
confounds a general interest in conversational
discourse style that favoured the inclusion of
reported speech in all narrative texts, and general
verbal aptitude.
In our second goal, in line with the data on
child and parent
child discourse, we sought to test
the prediction that, overall, females would re-
member more speech than would males. Given
females tendency towards greater specificity in
episodic memory and our past research, we also
predicted that females would use more direct and
indirect speech than would males. The final goal
of the present study was to assess generally the
frequency and form of reported speech in the
autobiographical memories of young adults.
Based in part on Johnstone’s (1993) data, we
expected that such reports would be pervasive in
memories of past personal experiences. Based on
memorable statement and the memory for con-
versation literature, we expected that direct
speech would be relatively rare, and indirect
and narratised speech more common. Given the
extant data, we made no prediction about
the relative frequencies of reports of speech of
the self or others.
METHOD
Participants
Participants were 60 female and 48 male under-
graduates who received course credit for their
participation. Their average age was 19.1 years
(SD1.2).
Materials
Participants were presented with a packet that
contained seven written prompts. One was a TAT
stimulus (Plate 3 from Smith, 1992, which depicts
a couple sitting on a bench looking out on a
river). Standard TAT instructions were employed.
The other six prompts, presented to all partici-
pants in the same order, were requests to describe
participants’ earliest memory, an early childhood

memory, a learning experience, a recent low
point, a recent high point, and a self-defining
memory (Singer & Salovey, 1993). These prompts
were selected in order to generate a rich range of
salient autobiographical memories across the life
span of young adults (McAdams, 1988). In addi-
tion, participants were asked to estimate their age
at the time the described events took place and
to rate the affective quality of the memory on a
7-point scale running from ‘‘negative’’ (1)
through ‘‘neutral’’ (4) to ‘‘positive’’ (7).
Also in the packet was the Five Factor
Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and the
Personal Attributes Questionnaire (Spence &
Helmreich, 1978). The Five Factor Inventory is
an abridged version of the widely employed
NEO-Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae,
1994). It produces summary scores for each of the
‘‘Big Five’’ traits. In the current study we focused
exclusively on the traits of extraversion, openness,
and agreeableness. For each trait respondents rate
12 self-descriptive statements on a 5-point scale,
ranging from ‘‘strongly disagree’’ to ‘‘strongly
agree’’. Examples include: ‘‘I really enjoy talking
to people’’ (extraversion) and ‘‘I generally try to
be thoughtful and considerate’’ (agreeableness).
The Five Factor Inventory has good internal and
test
retest reliability, and correlates highly with
the NEO-Personality Inventory, a measure with
well-documented construct, content, and criterion
validity (Costa & McCrae, 1994). In the current
study the Cronbach alphas for extraversion,
agreeableness, and openness were .79, .68, and
.75, respectively, representing adequate to good
reliability.
The Personal Attributes Questionnaire
(Spence & Helmreich, 1978) is a 24-item ques-
tionnaire that assesses traits stereotypically asso-
ciated with masculinity and femininity. We
focused exclusively on the eight-item female-
stereotypic trait of expressivity. Respondents
rate themselves on a 5-point scale; each item
contrasts the extremes of a trait or dimension.
Examples include ‘‘not at all emotional . . . very
emotional’’ and ‘‘not at all understanding of
others . . . very understanding of others’’. The
Personal Attributes Questionnaire has good in-
ternal consistency (Abele, 2003). Test
retest re-
liability has not been reported for the 24-item
measure, although adequate test
retest reliability
was reported for the original 55-item measure
(Lenney, 1991). The measure is also reported to
have good criterion validity (Spence, 1993). In the
current study, the Cronbach alpha for expressivity
REMEMBERING TALK 399
was .69, representing an adequate level of internal
reliability.
As part of a brief demographic questionnaire
included in the packet, participants who took the
SAT were asked to report their verbal score. The
concern that participants might inflate their self-
reported scores was mitigated by the finding that
the mean score of participants in our study was
within 8 points of the mean score of entering
freshmen (619) the year the data were gathered.
Design and procedure
Participants were told they were participating in a
study of memory and personality. They were
tested in small groups in a classroom setting.
They were presented with the TAT prompt first,
and then the six memory prompts in the order
listed earlier. They were given as much time as
they needed to respond to each prompt. Partici-
pants then completed the questionnaires in the
order presented earlier. There were several addi-
tional questionnaires in the packet that were
unrelated to the current study. The procedure
lasted less than 2 hours.
Data preparation
All hand-written narrative data were transcribed
to text files. We read through all files and
identified instances of reported speech, excluding
occurrences that were not explicitly applicable to
speech contexts (e.g., One large envelope stuck
out and it said BU [Boston University] on the top
left corner). The data were then coded for
speaker identity and form. In addition, we made
counts of the number of words each report of
speech encompassed, including in the count the
reported speaker, manner of speech (I remember
her telling me . . . jokingly . . .), speech verb or
noun, content of speech, and addressee.
Coding
Based on narrative content, we coded each
reported speech event as speech of the singular
self (So I asked if it was alright to stay with him),
plural self (We talked and he made me feel
better), or speech of other (. . . my mother
announced that she was going to adopt a baby).
We also coded the form as direct, indirect, or
400 ELY AND RYAN
narratised. In written discourse, direct speech is
marked by the use of a speech verb (e.g., say, tell)
and is enclosed in quotation marks. Indirect
speech is often marked linguistically by the use
of a nominal or infinitive clause or by transposi-
tions in person or verb tense. Finally, narratised
speech refers summarily to a past speech event
using a wide range of speech verbs and nouns
that, while sometimes characterising the nature of
the speech event (e.g., argument), provides little
sense of what was actually said.
The data were coded by the first author. In
order to assess reliability, more than one quarter
(27.2%) of the data were randomly selected and
coded by the second author. Both authors were
unaware of the sex of the participants. Cohen’s
kappas for the identity of the reported speaker
and form of reported speech were .92 and .79
respectively, representing ‘‘substantial’’ to ‘‘near
perfect’’ agreement (Landis & Koch, 1978).
RESULTS
In this section we first present our descriptive
data on the frequency and nature of reported
speech in order to provide a general sense of the
place of reported speech in autobiographical
memory. We then turn to look at the findings
regarding individual and group differences.
Frequency of reported speech
All participants complied with our request for a
TAT story. Five participants failed to respond to
one memory prompt, and one participant failed to
respond to two. In terms of pervasiveness, only six
(5.6%; five males, one female) participants failed
to produce at least one report of speech within
the six memory reports. The pervasiveness of
instances of reported speech within individual
categories of memory reports was somewhat
lower, ranging from 48.1% in narratives about a
recent high point to 65.7% in narratives about
a learning experience and averaged 57.1%
(Table 1).
Women (M150.4, SD26.7) produced
longer narratives than did men (M124.8,
SD32.0), t(106)4.53, pB.001, d.87, and
the length of memory reports was positively
correlated with the frequency of reported speech
r(108).56, pB.001. This correlation held for
both males, r(48).41, pB.005, and females,
r(60).52, pB.001. In order to control for
variations in length, we computed a standardised
rate of reported speech; the number of instances
of reported speech per narrative was divided by
the narrative word count and then multiplied by
100. In almost all instances, analyses run on raw
frequencies duplicated those run on standardised
frequencies, but with larger effect sizes.
The mean standardised rate across all partici-
pants’ memory reports was 1.0 (SD0.6); in
other words, on average there was one instance
of reported speech per 100 words of text. The
percentage of text encompassing reports of
speech across all memory reports was 8.3 (SD
5.2) and ranged from a low of 5.7 (SD9.8) in
memories of a high point to 10.4 (SD12.3) in
memories of a learning experience (Table 1).
Nature of reported speech
In speaker identity, participants principally
quoted the speech of others (55.6%). First person
(self) reports represented more than a third of all
reports (36.9%), and reports of the plural or we-
self were relatively rare (7.5%). A series of paired
t-tests indicated that the proportion of each
category of reported speaker differed signifi-
cantly from all other categories, with all ps
(B.001) exceeding the Bonferroni adjusted alpha
level of .01.
In form, direct speech was relatively uncom-
mon, constituting only 10.2% of all reports.
Indirect speech represented 30.8% of all reports,
with narratised accounts being the most common
(59.0%). As was the case with reported speaker, a
second series of paired t-tests indicated that the
proportion of each form of reported speech
differed significantly from all others, with all ps
(B.001) exceeding the Bonferroni adjusted alpha
level of .01.
Effects of prompts
Paired t-tests indicated that the standardised rates
of reported speech in early (1.10) and learning
(1.28) memories exceeded the rate in memories
of a high point (.67), all ps less than the
Bonferroni adjusted alpha level of .003. Although
small cell sizes precluded meaningful compari-
sons of individual coding categories between
memory reports, it is worth noting that the
frequency of direct speech, the most vivid form
 REMEMBERING TALK 401

TABLE 1
Descriptive data by memory prompt

Earliest Early Learning Low High Defining

Mean number of words in memory 133.17 (38.04) 150.28 (42.33) 144.14 (43.72) 147.81 (38.77) 128.64 (37.33) 130.37 (51.26)
reports
Mean number of instances of 1.29 (1.74) 1.71 (1.90) 2.02 (2.48) 1.49 (1.82) 0.92 (1.37) 1.34 (2.00)
reported speech
Mean number of words 10.44 (15.04) 13.60 (14.57) 16.28 (20.24) 11.81 (14.99) 8.10 (15.35) 10.87 (16.06)
encompassing reported speech
Percentage of words encompassing 7.55 (11.26) 8.80 (9.65) 10.39 (12.34) 7.41 (8.90) 5.65 (9.83) 7.71 (11.44)
reported speech
Percentage of participants reporting 54.6 63.9 65.7 59.3 48.1 50.9
speech at least once
Mean self-reported age (years) at 4.1 (2.1) 8.9 (2.5) 15.2 (3.2) 18.1 (1.7) 18.3 (1.6) 13.9 (4.6)
time of memory
Mean standardised rate of speech of .28 (.54) .30 (.57) .52 (.80) .40 (.60) .22 (.43) .37 (.80)
self
Mean standardised rate of we speech .01 (.13) .06 (.20) .05 (.17) .09 (.28) .15 (.48) .10 (.32)
Mean standardised rate of speech of .63 (.90) .74 (.94) .71 (.98) .44 (.71) .30 (.58) .48 (.79)
others
Mean standardised rate of direct .13 (.33) .13 (.37) .12 (.35) .06 (.23) .11 (.44) .12 (.40)
speech
Mean standardised rate of indirect .32 (.62) .47 (.76) .36 (.64) .29 (.58) .16 (.35) .23 (.49)
speech
Mean standardised rate of narratised .48 (.78) .50 (.73) .80 (1.07) .59 (.85) .41 (.73) .59 (.92)
speech
Mean standardised rate of all .93 (1.18) 1.10 (1.23) 1.28 (1.48) .94 (1.09) .67 (.97) .94 (1.37)
reported speech

Standard deviations in parentheses.

of reported speech, appears unrelated to age. As
can be seen in Table 1, the highest standardised
rates of direct speech (.13) appeared in partici-
pants’ earliest and early childhood memories, and
these reports represented their oldest memories,
dating back on average 10 or more years. The
lowest standardised frequency of direct speech
was in autobiographical memories about a recent
low point (.06), an event that took place on
average only a year earlier.
Thus, in terms of our goal of describing the
nature and frequency of reported speech, the data
indicate that almost all participants cited at least
one report of speech in their autobiographical
memories. Reported speech comprised more than
8% of narrative texts. The speech of others was
cited more than the speech of self, and narratised
reports were the predominate form of reported
speech.
Correlates of individual differences in
rates of reported speech
In order to assess our primary goal of examining
individual correlates of reported speech, we ran
zero-order correlations between the three FFI
traits of interest, expressivity, verbal SAT scores,
and the overall frequency of reported speech. As
can be seen in Table 2 there were significant
positive correlations between the standardised
rate of reported speech and openness, agreeable-
ness, and expressivity. However, contrary to our
expectations, extraversion was not significantly
correlated with the overall rate of reported
speech. Reported speech in TAT stories was not
predictive of reported speech in autobiographical
memories. Finally, verbal SAT scores were not
associated with the frequency of reported speech.
In order to determine how well some of these
correlates predicted the frequency of reported
speech, we ran a linear regression with openness,
agreeableness, and expressivity entered as pre-
dictors. One of the zero-order correlations be-
tween these three predictors was significant; there
was a positive correlation between agreeableness
and expressivity, r(108).35, pB.001. The model
was significant, R2 .10, adjusted R2 .08, F(3,
104)3.91, p.02, with only openness signifi-
cantly predicting the frequency of reported
speech (Table 2). When gender was entered as
an additional predictor, the amount of variance
402 ELY AND RYAN

TABLE 2
Zero order and partial correlations between agreeableness, openness, expressivity, gender, and the
standardised rate of reported speech

Zero order correlation Partial correlation without gender entered Partial correlation with gender entered

Extraversion .10
Openness .22* .22* .17
Agreeableness .20* .15 .07
Expressivity .19* .13 .11
Gender .35*** .26**

N 108.
*p B.05, ** p B.01, *** p B.001.

explained increased, R2 .16, adjusted R2 .13, Gender differences in reported speech

F(4, 103)4.92, p.001. However, in this model,
gender was the only significant predictor. We also
undertook mediational analyses for openness,
agreeableness, and expressivity. However, the
analyses did not go beyond Baron and Kenny’s
(1986) third step in which all three possible
mediators failed to affect the dependent variable.
Table 3 displays the correlations between the
standardised rates of reported speech within
individual memory categories and the respective
affective ratings of those memories. Four of the
six correlations were significant, and all but one
(recent high point) were negative. In other words,
with the exception of the prompt that explicitly
called for the recollection of what was presum-
ably a positive (high point) experience, negative
affect was associated with an increase in the
frequency of reported speech, and significantly
so in the two memories from childhood and from
a recent low point. There were no gender
differences in affect ratings.
TABLE 3
Correlations between affect ratings of memories and
standardised frequencies of reported speech
Memory n r
In our second goal, we had predicted that females
would use more reported speech than would
males. A multiple analysis of variance (MAN-
OVA) with gender as the factor was run across all
six categories of narratives. There was a signifi-
cant multivariate effect of gender, Wilks’ L.84,
F(6, 101)3.12, pB.01, h2 .16, driven princi-
pally by univariate effects of gender in three
categories: earliest memory, learning experience,
and a recent high point (Table 4). However, in all
six categories of narratives, females produced
more reported speech than did men. Pooling the
data across individual participants’ narratives,
females reported an average of 1.2 reports per
100 words (SD.6) compared with an average of
.8 per 100 words (SD.6) for males, t(106)
3.79, pB.001, d.67. There was no multivariate
effect of gender in terms of the percentage of
words reporting speech across all six memory
reports. However, pooling the total number of
words of reported speech over the total number
of word of memory reports did reveal that
TABLE 4
Mean standardised rates of reported speech and univariate
effects of sex on frequency of reported speech across
narrative prompts

Earliest memory 107 .27** Prompt Females Males F p

Early memory 107 .31**
Learning experience 105 .07 Earliest memory 1.1 (1.2) .7 (1.0) 4.80 .04
Recent low point 106 .23* Early memory 1.2 (1.2) 1.0 (1.3) .71 ns
Recent high point 106 .22* Learning experience 1.6 (1.5) .9 (1.4) 4.92 .03
Self defining memory 96 .13 Recent low point 1.1 (1.2) .8 (1.0) 1.64 ns
Recent high point .9 (1.1) .4 (.6) 8.17 .005
Ns vary because a small number of participants failed to Self defining memory 1.1 (1.5) .7 (1.2) 2.38 ns
respond to all memory prompts and/or some participants
failed to complete the affect rating scale for all memories. Degrees of freedom, 1, 106; standard deviations in
*p B.05, **p B.01. parentheses.
 REMEMBERING TALK 403

TABLE 5
Sex differences in extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and expressivity and main effects of covariates and sex on the
standardised rate of reported speech

Sex differencesa Effects of covariates and sexb

Females Males t p Ftrait ptrait Fsex psex Eta squared

Extraversion 30.6 (7.4) 28.2 (4.9) 2.02 .05 .19 ns 13.14 B.001 .11
Agreeableness 32.0 (6.0) 27.8 (5.6) 3.65 B.001 .94 ns 10.52 .002 .09
Openness 32.0 (5.5) 29.6 (5.6) 2.20 .03 2.65 ns 11.49 .001 .10
Expressivity 24.2 (3.9) 22.6 (3.7) 2.22 .03 1.74 ns 11.80 .001 .10
SAT verbal 631.2 (69.4) 622.9 (82.5) .52 ns

a b
Degrees of freedom, 106. Degrees of freedom, 1, 105.

females (M9.3, SD4.8) devoted a greater effect of gender on the proportional frequencies
percentage of the words in their memory reports (instances of form category of reported speech
to reporting speech than did males (M7.1, over all instances of reported speech) with which
SD5.4), t(106)2.26, pB.05, d.43. men and women used distinct forms of reported
Because gender differences in reported speech speech. In essence, when they actually reported
could be due to gender differences in personality speech, men and women were indistinguishable in
traits, and because males and females did in the form they used.
fact differ significantly in their scores on extra- We turn now to the data derived from TAT
version, openness, agreeableness, and expressivity stories that served as a control. Collecting TAT
(Table 5), we ran a series of analyses of covar- stories allowed us to compare participants’ pro-
iance (ANCOVAs) with these traits entered as pensity to generate reported speech in the ab-
covariates and sex as the between-participant sence of any memory load. The standardised rates
factor. After running preliminary analyses that of reported speech were nearly identical for
confirmed the homogeneity-of-slopes assumption females (M2.3, SD1.3) and males (M2.4,
for the variables of interest, we found that in all SD1.7), t(106) .26, p.79. Similarly, the
cases, there was a main effect of sex and no effect proportion of words devoted to reporting speech
of covariate. was similar for females (M.20, SD.13) and
In order to assess the degree to which gender males (M.21, SD.18), t(106) .56, p.58.
difference held across the categories of speaker The multivariate analyses for form of reported
identity and form of reported speech, we con- speech in standardised and proportional frequen-
ducted MANOVAs with gender as the factor. For cies were also not significant. In other words,
identity of speaker, there was a multivariate males and females did not differ in any appreci-
effect of gender, Wilks’ L.86, F(3, 104)5.54, able way in the amount or type of reported
pB.001, h2 .14. As can be seen in Table 6, the speech they used in their TAT stories.
univariate effects of gender were significant in all
three categories. In short, women more than men
cited the speech of themselves (singular and TABLE 6
Mean standardised rates and univariate effects of sex on
plural) and others. However, there was no multi- speaker and form
variate effect of sex on the proportional rates
(instances of speaker category of reported speech Females Males F p
over all instances of reported speech) with which
Speaker
men and women cited the speech of themselves or I .42 (.30) .30 (.25) 4.80 .04
others. We .10 (.12) .04 (.09) 6.80 .01
The multivariate effect of gender was also They .68 (.39) .44 (.38) 10.07 .002
significant for the form of reported speech, Wilks’ Form
L.85, F(3, 104)6.18, p.001, h2 .15. Sig- Direct .16 (.19) .06 (.11) 9.15 .003
nificant univariate effects held for two of the Indirect .36 (.27) .27 (.26) 3.30 .08
Narratised .67 (.35) .45 (.37) 10.17 .002
three categories, with women using direct and
narratised speech more frequently than men Degrees of freedom, 1, 106; standard deviations in
(Table 6). However, there was no multivariate parentheses.
404 ELY AND RYAN
DISCUSSION
Across their autobiographical memories, almost
all young adults include descriptions of speech
behaviour. This finding suggests that the vocal
grooming (Dunbar, 2004) that surrounds human
interactions finds itself represented in memories
about those same interactions. In our discussion
we touch first on the limitations of our study
before considering our general findings in terms
of frequency, identity of speaker, and form of
reported speech. We turn then to our interpreta-
tion of the individual and gender differences we
found before concluding with some general re-
marks about the special role reported speech
plays in human memory.
We recognise at the outset a number of
limitations to our study. First, our participants
represent a narrow segment of the population*
young, primarily middle-class, college students.
The data obtained from these participants may
not generalise to other populations. In addition,
we recognise that the memory reports elicited by
our prompts were, to a degree, acontextual. They
were directed to a generic audience and, as such,
may lack ecological validity. We acknowledge that
the sharing of these same memories with different
audiences (e.g., family, friends) and through
different media (cf. speech versus writing) could
affect participants’ memory styles (Pasupathi,
2001). At the same time, the acontextual nature
of our data collection controls for the variance
that might otherwise be present in more natural
settings. Finally, we acknowledge that some of our
measures were limited. For example, the Five
Factor Inventory did not allow us to assess trait
facets (as is the case with the NEO Personality
Inventory). Likewise, our affect rating scale was
rather crude in that it did not frame specifically
the perspective from which participants should
make their judgements and ran along a conti-
nuum from positive to negative.
We found that an instance of reported speech
appeared on average once every 100 words and
that, overall, reports of speech comprised more
than 8% of the text of memory reports. The
pervasiveness and proportional data are broadly
in line with those reported by Johnstone (1993).
In terms of whose speech is reported, overall
slightly more than half of all reported speech was
the speech of another speaker, while speech of
the singular self represented more than one third
of all reports. The propensity to recall more self
than other speech that was found in experimental
studies of speech recall (Miller et al., 1996;
Wagner, 1984) was not reflected here in the
autobiographical reports of young adults. We
believe that the absence of what has been termed
a generation effect is likely due to the artificial
and impersonal nature of the conversations that
were targeted in the experimental research.
Recalling contributions to discussions with stran-
gers about the merits of liberal arts courses
(Miller et al., 1996) or the intricacies of a criminal
case (Wagner, 1984) is not the same thing as a
young man’s recollection of how he came to learn
that his parents were separating.
My first vivid memory is when my parents told
me that they were separating. It was a few weeks
after my birthday and I was standing in our den
on a beautiful day. My father told me that we
were going to have a family talk. I got excited
and my dad asked me why I was excited. I lied
and said it was because I thought he said walk.
The truth was because we had done nothing as
a family recently. They took me into the sun-
room with my mom, dad, and older brother
(nine years old). They then told me that my
father was moving out.
As this example makes clear, the highly
personal nature of what was said by another and
the impact it had on him is likely to be why it was
so readily and ‘‘vividly’’ recalled (Keenan et al.,
1977; MacWhinney et al., 1982). The participant
does report a single instance of his own speech,
but his primary focus appears directed towards
what his parents said. As we will discuss in more
detail shortly, the meta-representational nature of
reported speech is particularly significant when
what is recalled is the personally relevant meta-
representations of others.
This is not to say that the speech of the self is
unimportant. Outside of a number of pedestrian
reports (which was also true of speech of others),
recollected speech of the self was often related to
compelling self-revelatory or self-assertive state-
ments. For example, a female participant’s child-
hood memory included a description of how she
worried for months about what, in retrospect,
seemed like a minor violation of a classroom
protocol:
. . . finally one night I burst into tears . . . and
told my Mom what had happened . . . I just
remember being so worried . . . and then the

weight being lifted when I finally told my Mom
how upset I was.
In another example, a female participant
reported her final reaction to numerous polite
but ineffective corrections of her teachers mis-
pronunciation of her name: ‘‘I screamed at her,
‘Not BJ, Beejal, with an L!’’’ These examples
illustrate how memory of past speech of the self
can, in a certain circumstances, be as compelling
and as vivid as memory of the speech of others.
In form, the majority of accounts were sum-
mary accounts (narratised speech). This is not
unexpected given the memory for speech litera-
ture reviewed earlier. We have argued that the
three forms of reported speech reflect varying
degrees of vividness, and the fact that most
recollections of conversations are towards the
less vivid end of the continuum is in line with
Rubin and colleagues’ findings for ratings for
vividness of remembered talk. Their data (from
Rubin & Seigler, 2004) suggest that on a 7-point
scale, participants rate talk vividness (4.23) well
below ratings for ‘‘see’’ (5.61) and ‘‘setting’’
(5.96).
Nevertheless, many other reports included
some sense of what was once said, with a small
number (slightly more than 10%) taking the form
of direct speech. The recollection of direct reports
from many years in the past is in line with the
high degree of participant confidence for verba-
tim recall that was described by memorable
statement researchers (Goldsmith & Pillemer,
1988; Knapp et al., 1981). While being cautious
given the degree to which small cell sizes pre-
cluded meaningful statistical comparisons, two
patterns in direct reports deserve comment. First,
the frequency of direct speech seems unrelated to
age of memory, with the first and second highest
standardised rates occurring in reports elicited by
prompts for the earliest and an early childhood
memory. This suggests that vivid recall of speech
from many years in the past, though not common,
is also not highly unusual. Second, it is notable
that the lowest rate was found in response to the
prompt for a memory of a recent low point, a
finding that is compatible with what is known
about how affect and affect regulation interact
with memory specificity (Williams et al., 2007).
Initially we had thought that the individual
difference in memories of reported speech might
be associated with individual differences in per-
sonality dispositions, in line with what has been
found in past research. There were indeed modest
REMEMBERING TALK 405
but significant correlations for three of the four
personality variables of interest, confirming at
least for openness and agreeableness what Rubin
and Siegler (2004) had reported. We had argued
that the traits of openness, agreeableness, and
expressivity were likely to reflect a heightened
interest in interpersonal interactions, including
conversational interactions (Botwin et al., 1997;
Jensen-Campbell & Graziano, 2001; McCrae,
1996; Spence, 1991). This in turn could be
associated with a tendency to focus on conversa-
tion in autobiographical memories. In this regard,
we are not sure what to make of the absence of a
significant correlation between extraversion and
reported speech other than to note that there is
not a simple relationship between extraversion
and reported speech, despite what we might have
thought at the outset.
The experience of affect was another domain
in which individual differences were evident. We
would argue that memorable speech acts are
likely to be associated with a degree of affect,
reflecting the importance of their content (Gold-
smith & Pillemer, 1988; Keenan et al., 1977;
Knapp et al., 1981; MacWhinney et al., 1982).
This conclusion is supported by the correlations
between affect ratings and the frequency of
reported speech, which parallel the correlational
findings reported by Rubin and colleagues (2003).
In our data, with the exception of autobiographi-
cal memories of high points, the more negative
the rating, the more frequent the incidence of
reported speech, significantly so in the case of
three categories (earliest, early, and recent low
point reports). Although these correlations may
merely reflect memories containing greater de-
grees of emotionally charged human interactions,
such interactions are likely to be mediated
through language, the most explicit vehicle for
communicating affective and cognitive informa-
tion (Dunbar, 2004).
The gender differences we report here are
generally consistent with our earlier child and
parent
child data. Most of the effect sizes were in
the moderate to large range (Cohen, 1988). In
short, women reported more speech of them-
selves and others, and used direct and narratised
speech more than did men. The gender difference
in the proportion of words containing reported
speech was similar to that for transcript lines
described by Johnstone (1993). Importantly, in
terms of the propensity to produce reported
speech in narratives not dependent on episodic
memory, men and women were very similar in the
406 ELY AND RYAN
rate and form of their reported speech in TAT
stories. Thus, the gender differences appear to be
restricted to autobiographical memories, and are
likely to reflect broader qualitative differences in
the content of autobiographical memories of men
and women, with women being more focused on
interpersonal (conversational) relationships than
are men.
Looking specifically at the gender differences
in speaker and form suggests first that women
overall report more speech by all speakers than
do men. For form, the data suggest that women
recall both more specific images of conversation
(direct speech) in line with our parent
child data
and the findings of Pillemer and colleagues (2003)
and Acitelli and Holmberg (1993). The pattern
for indirect speech favoured women, but was just
shy of significance. Of course they also recalled
more general images of talk (narratised speech), a
result we had not anticipated. As we will discuss
more fully below, these findings fit broadly within
the notion that women are more focused on
communication and language than are men, and
subsequently are more likely to encode, retain,
and later reconstruct descriptions of all forms of
talk. More importantly, when the variables that
differed by gender (Budaev, 1999; Costa, Terrac-
ciano, & McCrae, 2001; Spence, 1993) were
entered as covariates in ANCOVAs run with
reported speech as the dependent variable and
gender as the independent variable, the effect of
gender remained. These results along with those
of our second regression analysis are rather stark
in their implication: something beyond traits and
attributes that are typically associated with gen-
der is likely to be driving the difference in
attention to past speech.
Biological explanations for why females per-
form better on measures of episodic memory
include differences in brain organisation (Per-
singer & Richard, 1995) and hormones (Jacobs et
al., 1998; Wolf & Kirschbaum, 2002). Another
possible explanation focuses on volubility.
Although women have been cast as the more
talkative gender, recent data do not support this
stereotype (Leaper & Ayres, 2007; Mehl, Vazire,
Ramı́rez-Esparza, Slatcher, & Pennebaker, 2007).
Thus, there is no reason to believe that women
should remember more talk because they talk
more than men.
An explanation we are partial to focuses on
differential socialisation (Bauer et al., 2003;
Fivush et al., 2006; Reese, 2002). There is a
body of work which indicates that children’s
earliest experiences with parent
child reminiscing
differ along gender lines (Buckner & Fivush,
1998, 2000). In talking about past events, parents
are more elaborative and more emotional when
conversing with daughters than with sons (Fivush,
Berlin, Sales, Mennuti-Washburn, & Cassidy,
2003). Not surprisingly, girls’ narratives of past
personal experience are in turn more elaborated
and more emotionally complex than are boys’
(Buckner & Fivush, 1998; Stapley & Haviland,
1989). It is even possible that some speech events
are intrinsically more emotional (as we will
suggest shortly) and as such are encoded more
deeply by females than by males (Bloise &
Johnson, 2007; Seidlitz & Diener, 1998).
In one of our longitudinal studies of parent

child discourse, we found that mothers and girls
were more focused on talking about past speech
events than were fathers or boys, and girls later
used more reported speech than did boys in
talking independently about the past with an
experimenter (Ely et al., 1996). These data
suggest that attention to language is part of the
female role wherein women and girls are viewed
as communicators (Ely, Gleason, MacGibbon, &
Zaretsky, 2001). Evidence from studies of early
parent
child interactions suggest that this is in
fact the case, with mothers fostering communica-
tion more than fathers, especially when interac-
ting with their daughters (Fagot & Hagan, 1991).
We turn now to the broader implications of our
findings. Although Bandura (1997) has down-
played the role verbal persuasion plays in foster-
ing or impeding self-efficacy, anecdotal and
empirical evidence suggests that, outside the
laboratory, what was once said can have lasting
and profound effects (Hermans et al., 1992;
Pillemer, 2001). In this regard, it is remarkable
how many of the examples included in Pillemer’s
(2001) paper on momentous events centre around
reports of speech. They include Tulving’s emo-
tional reaction to a ‘‘casual comment’’ of a friend,
the effects of an overheard ‘‘brilliant conversa-
tion’’ on a woman’s pioneering career choice, and
a number of instances where compelling remarks
made by professors had long-term impact on their
student listeners.
We encountered a number of such instances*
narratives in which speech acts were described as
constituting momentous events (Pillemer, 1998,
2001). Many of these memorable remarks were
produced by speakers of higher status than the
(participant) listeners (Knapp et al., 1981). For
example, a male participant reports in vivid direct

speech his coach’s response to a throw he made
that accidentally injured another player on his
baseball team:
While I was going to see if he [the other player]
was ok the coach just turns to me and says,
‘‘Get out of here you little bastard, you have
done enough.’’ I didn’t play baseball for 5 years
after that.
In our final example, a female participant
recounts what her father said in response to a
homework query:
I remember I was asking my dad a question
about math. And he asked me back, ‘‘What do
you think?’’ And I said I didn’t know. He said,
‘‘You can’t be that stupid.’’ After that I always
felt that I was never good enough. I could never
be the best. Till today I still can’t forgive my
father for hurting me the way he did. I felt like
my heart was torn in pieces. I never asked him
anything again. This is why I’m always trying to
prove myself to be better.
These memories cast speech acts as pivotal
events, as worthy of mention as any other
behaviour, perhaps more so in that they capture
vivid and explicit representations of the affect,
attitude, and cognitions of the self and others. The
ability to encode, retrieve, and reconstruct these
representations is likely to have a played a key
role in human evolution and culture (Ong, 1982;
Rubin, 1995). And ontologically, as our data
suggest, memories of speech are likely to figure
prominently in the life stories of many young
adults.
Manuscript received 19 November 2007
Manuscript accepted 25 January 2008
First published online 5 March 2008
REFERENCES
Abele, A. E. (2003). The dynamics of masculine-agentic
and feminine-communal traits: Findings from a
prospective study. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 85, 768
776.
Acitelli, L. K., & Holmberg, D. (1993). Reflecting on
relationships: The role of thoughts and memories.
Advances in Personal Relationships, 4, 71
100.
Bakan, D. (1966). The duality of human existence:
Isolation and communion in Western man. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of
control. New York: W. H. Freeman.
REMEMBERING TALK 407
Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator

mediator variable distinction in social psychological
research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical con-
siderations. Journal of Personality and Social Psy-
chology, 51, 1173
1182.
Bauer, P. J., Stennes, L., & Haight, J. C. (2003).
Representation of the inner self in autobiography:
Women’s and men’s use of internal states language
in personal narratives. Memory, 11, 27
42.
Blagov, P. S., & Singer, J. A. (2004). Four dimensions of
self-defining memories (specificity, meaning, con-
tent, and affect) and their relationships to self-
restraint, distress, and repressive defensiveness.
Journal of Personality, 72, 481
511.
Bloise, S. M., & Johnson, M. K. (2007). Memory for
emotional and neutral information: Gender and
individual differences in emotional sensitivity.
Memory, 15, 192
204.
Botwin, M. D., Buss, D. M., & Shackelford, T. K.
(1997). Personality and mate preferences: Five
factors in mate selection and marital satisfaction.
Journal of Personality, 65, 107
136.
Bruck, M., Ceci, S. J., & Francoeur, E. (1999). The
accuracy of mothers’ memories of conversations
with their preschool children. Journal of Experi-
mental Psychology: Applied, 5, 89
106
Buckner, J. P., & Fivush, R. (1998). Gender and self in
children’s autobiographical narratives. Applied Cog-
nitive Psychology, 12, 407
429.
Buckner, J. P., & Fivush, R. (2000). Gendered themes in
family reminiscing. Memory, 8, 401
412.
Budaev, S. V. (1999). Sex differences in the Big Five
personality factors: Testing an evolutionary hypoth-
esis. Personality and Individual Differences, 26, 801

813.
Campos, L., & Alonso-Quecuty, M. L. (2006). Remem-
bering a criminal conversation: Beyond eyewitness
testimony. Memory, 14, 27
36.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the
behavioral sciences. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erl-
baum Associates Inc.
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). The NEO Five-
Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). Odessa, FL: Psycho-
logical Assessment Resources.
Costa, P. T., & McCrae, R. R. (1994). The NEO-PI-R:
Professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological
Assessment Resources.
Costa, P. T., Terracciano, A., & McCrae, R. R. (2001).
Gender differences in personality traits across
cultures: Robust and surprising findings. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 322
331.
Crawford, M., Herrmann, D. J., Holdsworth, M. J.,
Randall, E. P., & Robbins, D. (1989). Gender and
beliefs about memory. British Journal of Psychology,
80, 391
401.
Cross, S. E., & Madson, L. (1997). Models of the self:
Self construals and gender. Psychological Bulletin,
122, 5
37.
Dunbar, R. I. M. (2004). Gossip in evolutionary
perspective. Review of General Psychology, 8, 100

110.
Ely, R., Gleason, J. B., MacGibbon, A., & Zaretsky, E.
(2001). Attention to language: Lessons learned at
the dinner table. Social Development, 10, 355
373.
408 ELY AND RYAN
Ely, R., Gleason, J. B., & McCabe, A. (1996). ‘‘Why
didn’t you talk to your Mommy, Honey?’’
Gender
differences in talk about past talk. Research on
Language and Social Interaction, 20, 7
25.
Ely, R., Gleason, J. B., Narasimhan, B., & McCabe, A.
(1995). Family talk about talk: Mothers lead the way.
Discourse Processes, 19, 201
218.
Ely, R., & McCabe, A. (1993). Remembered voices.
Journal of Child Language, 20, 671
696.
Ely, R., & McCabe, A. (1996). Gender differences in
memories for speech. In P. Thompson (Ed.), Inter-
national yearbook of oral history and life stories:
Memory and gender (pp. 17
30). New York: Oxford
University Press.
Ely, R., Melzi, G., Hadge, L., & McCabe, A. (1998).
Being brave, being nice: Themes of agency and
communion in children’s narratives. Journal of
Personality, 66, 257
284.
Fivush, R., Berlin, L., Sales, J. M., Mennuti-Washburn,
J., & Cassidy, J. (2003). Functions of parent
child
reminiscing about emotionally negative events.
Memory, 11, 179
192.
Fivush, R., Haden, C. A., & Reese, E. (2006). Elabor-
ating on elaborations: Role of maternal reminiscing
style in cognitive and social development. Child
Development, 77, 1568
1588.
Fagot, B. A., & Hagan, R. (1991). Observations of
parent reactions to sex-stereotyped behaviors: Age
and sex effects. Child Development, 62, 617
628.
Genette, G. (1988). Narrative discourse revisited.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Goldsmith, L. R., & Pillemer, D. B. (1988). Memories
of statements spoken in everyday contexts. Applied
Cognitive Psychology, 2, 273
286.
Herlitz, A., Nilsson, L-G., & Bäckman, L. (1997).
Gender differences in episodic memory. Memory
& Cognition, 25, 801
811.
Herlitz, A., & Yonker, J. E. (2002). Sex differences in
episodic memory: The influence of intelligence.
Journal of Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychol-
ogy, 24, 107
114.
Hermans, H. J. M., Kempen, H. J. G., & van Loon, R. J.
P. (1992). The dialogical self. American Psychologist,
47, 23
33.
Holt, E. (2000). Reporting and reacting: Concurrent
responses to reported speech. Research on Lan-
guage and Social Interaction, 33, 425
454.
Hyman, I. E., & Neisser, U. (1992). The role of the self
in recollections of a seminar. Journal of Narrative
and Life History, 2, 81
103.
Jacobs, D. M., Tang, M-X., Stern, Y., Sano, M., Marder,
K., Bell, K. L., et al. (1998). Cognitive function in
nondemented older women who took estrogen after
menopause. Neurology, 50, 368
373.
Jensen-Campbell, L. A., & Graziano, W. G. (2001).
Agreeableness as a moderator of interpersonal
conflict. Journal of Personality, 69, 323
362.
Johnstone, B. (1993). Community and contest: Mid-
western men and women creating their worlds in
conversational storytelling. In D. Tannen (Ed.),
Gender and conversational interaction (pp. 62
80).
New York: Oxford University Press.
Keenan, J. M., MacWhinney, B., & Mayhew, D. (1977).
Pragmatics in memory: A study of natural conversa-
tion. Journal of Verbal Learning & Verbal Behavior,
16, 549
560.
Knapp, M. L., Stohl, C., & Reardon, K. K. (1981).
‘‘Memorable’’ messages. Journal of Communication,
31(Autumn), 27
41.
Labov, W. (1972). Language in the inner city: Studies in
the Black English vernacular. Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press.
Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. (1977). The measurement
of observer agreement for categorical data. Bio-
metrics, 33, 159
174.
Leaper, C., & Ayres, M. M. (2007). A meta-analytic
review of gender variation in adults’ language use:
Talkativesness, affiliative speech, and assertive
speech. Personality and Social Psychology Review,
11, 328
363.
Lenney, E. (1991). Sex roles: The measurement of
masculinity, femininity, and androgyny. In J. P.
Robinson, P. R. Shaven, & L. S. Wrightsman
(Eds.), Measures of personality and social psycholo-
gical attitudes (pp. 573
660). San Diego, CA: Aca-
demic Press.
Levine, L. J., & Pizarro, D. A. (2004). Emotion and
memory research: A grumpy overview. Social Cog-
nition, 232, 530
554.
Lewin, C., Wolgers, G., & Herlitz, A. (2001). Sex
differences favoring women in verbal and non-
verbal, but not in visuospatial episodic memory.
Neuropsychology, 15, 164
173.
Ling, J., & Coombie, A. (2005). Age effects in ear-
witness recall of a novel conversation. Perceptual
and Motor Skills, 100, 774
776.
Loftus, E. E., Benaji, M. R., Schooler, J. W., & Foster,
R. A. (1987). Who remembers what? Gender
differences in memory. Michigan Quarterly Review,
26, 64
85.
MacWhinney, B., Keenan, J. M., & Reinke, P. (1982).
The role of arousal in memory for conversation.
Memory & Cognition, 10, 308
317.
McAdams, D. (1988). Power, intimacy and the life story:
Personological inquiries into identity. New York:
Guilford Press.
McCrae, R. (1996). Social consequences of experiential
openness. Psychological Bulletin, 120, 323
337.
Mehl, M. R., Vazire, S., Ramı́rez-Esparza, N., Slatcher,
R. B., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2007). Are women really
more talkative than men? Science, 317, 82.
Miller, J. B., de Winstanley, P., & Carey, P. (1996).
Memory for conversation. Memory, 4, 615
631.
Neisser, U. (1981). John Dean’s memory: A case study.
Cognition, 9, 1
22.
Niedźwieńska, A. (2003). Gender differences in vivid
memories. Sex Roles, 49, 321
331.
Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologiz-
ing of the word. New York: Metheun.
Pasupathi, M. (2001). The social construction of the
personal past and its implications for adult devel-
opment. Psychological Bulletin, 127, 651
672.
Persinger, M. A., & Richards, P. M. (1995). Women
reconstruct more details than men for a complex
five-minute narrative: Implications for right-hemi-
spheric factors in the serial memory effect. Percep-
tual and Motor Skills, 80, 403
410.

Pillemer, D. B. (1998). Momentous events, vivid mem-
ories: How unforgettable moments help us under-
stand the meaning of our lives. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Pillemer, D. B. (2001). Momentous events and the life
story. Review of General Psychology, 5, 123
134.
Pillemer, D. B., Wink, P., DiDonato, T. E., & Sanborn,
R. L. (2003). Gender differences in autobiographical
memory styles of older adults. Memory, 11, 525
532.
Reese, E. (2002). Social factors in the development of
autobiographical memory: The state of the art.
Social Development, 11, 124
142.
Roberts, J. E., Carlos, E. L., & Kashdan, T. B. (2006).
Impact of depressive symptoms, self-esteem and
neuroticism on trajectories of over general autobio-
graphical memory over repeated trials. Cognition &
Emotion, 20, 383
401.
Rubin, D. C. (1995). Memory in oral traditions: The
cognitive psychology of epic, ballads, and counting-
out rhymes. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rubin, D. C., & Greenberg, D. L. (2003). The role of
narrative in recollection: A view from cognitive
psychology and neuropsychology. In G. D. Fireman,
T. E., McVay Jr., & O. J. Flanagan (Eds.), Narrative
and consciousness: Literature, psychology and the
brain (pp. 53
85). New York: Oxford University
Press.
Rubin, D. C., Schrauf, R. W., & Greenberg, D. L.
(2003). Belief and recollection of autobiographical
memories. Memory & Cognition, 31, 887
901.
Rubin, D. C., & Siegler, I. C. (2004). Facets of
personality and the phenomenology of autobiogra-
phical memory. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 18,
913
930.
Sehulster, J. R. (1995). Memory styles and related
abilities in presentation of self. American Journal
of Psychology, 108, 67
88.
Seidlitz, L., & Diener, E. (1998). Sex differences in the
recall of affective experiences. Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, 74, 262
271.
Singer, J. P., & Salovey, P. (1993). The remembered self:
Emotion and memory in personality. New York: The
Free Press.
REMEMBERING TALK 409
Smith, C. P. (Ed.). (1992). Motivation and personality:
Handbook of thematic content analysis. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Spence, J. T. (1991). Do the BSRI and PAQ measure
the same or different concepts? Psychology of
Women Quarterly, 15, 141
163.
Spence, J. T. (1993). Gender-related traits and gender
ideology: Evidence for a multifactorial theory.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64,
623
635.
Spence, J. T., & Helmreich, R. L. (1978). Masculinity
and femininity: Their psychological dimensions,
correlates, and antecedents. Austin, TX: University
of Texas Press.
Stafford, L., & Daly, J. A. (1984). Conversational
memory: The effects of recall mode and memory
expectancies on remembrances of natural conversa-
tions. Human Communication Research, 10, 379

402.
Stapley, J. C., & Haviland, J. M. (1989). Beyond
depression: Gender differences in normal adoles-
cents’ emotional experiences. Sex Roles, 20, 295
308.
Valian, V. (1998). Why so slow?: The advancement of
women. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Tannen, D. (1990). You just don’t understand: Women
and men in conversation. New York: Ballantine.
Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A
usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Wagner, W. (1984). Recognition of own and others’
utterances in a natural conversation. Personality and
Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 596
604.
Williams, J. M. G., Barnhofer, T., Crane, C., Hermans,
D., Raes, F., Watkins, E., et al. (2007). Autobiogra-
phical memory specificity and emotional disorder.
Psychological Bulletin, 133, 122
148.
Wolf, O. T., & Kirschbaum, D. (2002). Endogenous
estradiol and testosterone levels are associated with
cognitive performance in older women and men.
Hormones and Behavior, 41, 259
266.
Yonker, J. E., Eriksson, E., Nilsson, L-G., & Herlitz, A.
(2003). Sex differences in episodic memory: Minimal
influence of estradiol. Brain and Cognition, 52, 231

238.