One of the most common stories portrayed in the media is that of an awkward husband or boyfriend who forgot his partner's birthday, first anniversary, or even Valentine's Day. He scrambles frantically to try to cover up his lack of preparation, lest his partner discover how incapable he is of remembering crucial, symbolic steps. Whether he succeeds or not, hilarity usually ensues and the stereotype of the carefree, callous man is further cemented in popular culture. Indeed, the general population believes that women have better memories than men, and it is difficult to say whether this recurring theme in entertainment is a product of this belief, or whether it is the influence that led to the widely held hypothesis. that women remember better (Knox 1; Loftus et al. 19). Regardless, research has shown that this universal notion can only be partially validated; While women are generally superior when it comes to long-term memory and some aspects of short-term memory such as multitasking and remembering faces, men excel in other areas that require memory capacity to equally high short-term ("Sex Differences in Memory"; Knox 3; Speck et al. Short-term memory (STM) is defined by Revlin as the system that facilitates the successful execution of activities "in every moment", such as mentally keeping shopping lists and memorizing phone numbers (119) As the name suggests, STM describes the compartment of the human mind that can only hold a limited amount of information – approximately. 7 unrelated items – for about 18 seconds at a time (Revlin 120-125 refers to the mechanical component of STM that is not concerned with storage as "working memory......middle of the). paper...... Works Cited Association for Psychological Science. “Sex Differences in Memory: Women Are Better Than Men at Remembering Daily Events.” " ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, February 21, 2008. .Baddeley, AD " Working memory: an overview. "Working Memory and Education (2006): 1- 31. Knox, Richard et al. "Sex-Based Short-Term Memory" Pennsylvania: Penn State University (2007). Loftus, Elizabeth F., et al. "Who remember what? Sex differences in memory. " Michigan Quarterly Review 26 (1987): 64-85. Revlin, Russell. " Short-term and working memory. "Cognition: Theory and Practice. New York, NY: Worth Publishers, 2013. 118-149. . Print.Speck, Oliver, et al. "Sex differences in functional brain organization for working memory." 11.11 (2000): 2581-2585.