If the man in your life cannot remember the plot of the slushy film you watched last night, it may not be because he wasn't paying attention.
It may be beyond his control.
Researchers have found so-called gender conditioning in childhood affects how easily we follow a film and how much we absorb.
Boys excel at recalling details of action films because the content “matches” their gender, while girls have a better memory for romantic comedies.
In the study for the British Psychological Society, German researchers showed 160 men and women 30-minute clips from two romantic comedies and two action films, then gave them a surprise test.
The men remembered more details of the action movies, while the women did better with the romances.
The findings could not be explained by the volunteers being more familiar with some of the films than others. The degree to which they enjoyed a film also wasn't linked to how much they remembered, said the journal Applied Cognitive Psychology. - Daily Mail