[Corpora-List] FW: Gender differences in language

Tue Mar 18 00:17:44 UTC 2008

This quote is from research at Northwestern University re gender based
language acquisition differences.  It was on another list, but I think the
readers of this list will also be interested.  

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich at EnglishLogicKernel.com

 <http://www.northwestern.edu/> 

Gender Differences in Language Appear Biological 

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Although researchers have long agreed that girls have
superior language abilities than boys, until now no one has clearly provided
a biological basis that may account for their differences. 

For the first time -- and in unambiguous findings -- researchers from
Northwestern University and the University of Haifa show both that areas of
the brain associated with language work harder in girls than in boys during
language tasks, and that boys and girls rely on different parts of the brain
when performing these tasks.

"Our findings - which suggest that language processing is more sensory in
boys and more abstract in girls -- could have major implications for
teaching children and even provide support for advocates of single sex
classrooms," said Douglas Burman, research associate in Northwestern's
Roxelyn <http://commweb.soc.northwestern.edu/csd/about/>  and Richard Pepper
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Burman is primary author of "Sex Differences in Neural Processing of
Language Among Children." Co-authored by James R. Booth (Northwestern
University) and Tali Bitan (University of Haifa), the article will be
published in the March issue of the journal Neuropsychologia and now is
available online at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.12.021.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers measured
brain activity in 31 boys and in 31 girls aged 9 to 15 as they performed
spelling and writing language tasks. 

The tasks were delivered in two sensory modalities -- visual and auditory.
When visually presented, the children read certain words without hearing
them. Presented in an auditory mode, they heard words aloud but did not see
them. 

Using a complex statistical model, the researchers accounted for differences
associated with age, gender, type of linguistic judgment, performance
accuracy and the method -- written or spoken -- in which words were
presented.  

The researchers found that girls still showed significantly greater
activation in language areas of the brain than boys. The information in the
tasks got through to girls' language areas of the brain -- areas associated
with abstract thinking through language. And their performance accuracy
correlated with the degree of activation in some of these language areas. 

To their astonishment, however, this was not at all the case for boys. In
boys, accurate performance depended -- when reading words -- on how hard
visual areas of the brain worked. In hearing words, boys' performance
depended on how hard auditory areas of the brain worked. 

If that pattern extends to language processing that occurs in the classroom,
it could inform teaching and testing methods.

 Given boys' sensory approach, boys might be more effectively evaluated on
knowledge gained from lectures via oral tests and on knowledge gained by
reading via written tests. For girls, whose language processing appears more
abstract in approach, these different testing methods would appear
unnecessary. 

"One possibility is that boys have some kind of bottleneck in their sensory
processes that can hold up visual or auditory information and keep it from
being fed into the language areas of the brain," Burman said. This could
result simply from girls developing faster than boys, in which case the
differences between the sexes might disappear by adulthood. 

 Or, an alternative explanation is that boys create visual and auditory
associations such that meanings associated with a word are brought to mind
simply from seeing or hearing the word. 

While the second explanation puts males at a disadvantage in more abstract
language function, those kinds of sensory associations may have provided an
evolutionary advantage for primitive men whose survival required them to
quickly recognize danger-associated sights and sounds.

If the pattern of females relying on an abstract language network and of
males relying on sensory areas of the brain extends into adulthood -- a
still unresolved question -- it could explain why women often provide more
context and abstract representation than men. 

Ask a woman for directions and you may hear something like: "Turn left on
Main Street, go one block past the drug store, and then turn right, where
there's a flower shop on one corner and a cafe across the street."

Such information-laden directions may be helpful for women because all
information is relevant to the abstract concept of where to turn; however,
men may require only one cue and be distracted by additional information.

The research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Deafness and
Other Communication.

Source: http://www.northwestern.edu/

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