Gender Differences in Language Abilities: Evidence from Brain Imaging
By Douglas D. Burman, Ph.D. — Gender Differences Special Edition Contributor
Updated on Oct 12, 2010
Are there gender differences in reading and language abilities?
Differences in language abilities between the genders have been observed and reported for many years. For instance, the following differences have been found in research:
- Girls begin to talk sooner and more clearly than boys .
- The average 20-month old girl has twice the vocabulary of the average 20-month old boy .
- Boys are much more likely to be diagnosed with stuttering  and handwriting .
- There are no gender differences in vocabulary knowledge, , but females tend to have more advanced spelling and grammar skills .
These observed differences have led to many questions. Are these language differences innate or are they due to social factors? If boys and girls have difference language skills, should they be schooled separately in single-sex classes?
What kind of research is being conducted to address questions related to gender differences?
Science cannot answer these questions directly, but it can help us better understand the nature and possible source of these observed gender differences. In the last fifteen years, a technique called “functional magnetic resonance imaging” (usually shortened to “fMRI”) has allowed scientists to explore whether gender differences exist in the brain that could explain known differences in language abilities. fMRI allows scientists to measure blood flow in the brain during different behavioral tasks, mapping associations between activity in the brain and various activities. Demonstrating such differences does not prove that they are innate; the activity of the brain is shaped by our experiences as well as our innate brain structure. Finding gender differences in the brain would indicate, however, that there is a biological basis for differences in language abilities, and could provide further insight into the nature of those differences.
Recently, my research colleagues, Tali Bitan and James Booth, and I decided to explore whether gender differences are present in the brain activity of children performing language tasks. What kind of language tasks, you ask? In one language task, each child was presented with two words, one visual and one auditory, and they were asked to determine whether the two words rhymed. A second language task required the child to judge whether two words presented sequentially shared all letters after the first consonant or consonant cluster.
Except for one child study, fMRI studies that had previously found gender differences for language had tested adults, showing activity in language areas on both sides of the brain for females but mostly on the left side for males. These results were controversial, however, with an equal number of adult studies failing to find any gender differences. Among children, the only fMRI language study that showed gender differences found a slightly larger increase in language-related activity among girls as they got older than what was seen for boys. Because these effects were small and other child studies failed to uncover such gender differences, the authors concluded that differences in brain activity between boys and girls were too small to have much practical significance. Within this context, my co-authors and I designed a fMRI study to clarify gender differences in language processing. The children participating in the study were between the ages of 9-15 years.
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