Abstract:  Familiarity Heuristics is a brain function that influences the way we communicate. Prior research has been done on Familiarity Heuristics and response time; there has also been prior research done on gender differences in communication. A lack of connection between those two topics leads to the research question, “How does gender affect the way that humans communicate and form responses through the lens of familiarity heuristics?” To find the answer to these questions, participants in the study were read a story and were asked to answer fill-in-the-blank questions. These participants were all 9th- to 12th-graders in Hampton High School and participated in a face-to-face interview. This study found that gender does not affect familiarity heuristics or impact response time. This study backed up the ideas of others in the field by confirming the idea that familiarity heuristics and response time are closely related. Due to this research showing there is no connection between gender and familiarity heuristics, future research should be done on other cognitive differences like age, whether a student is monolingual or bilingual, and ethnicity, using the same method to try and find a connection.