Language Scientific Publication Report

Lisa Murphy

Language Scientific Publication Report

Many studies have shown that females generally perform better on language tasks compared to their male counterparts. Even at a young age, females are often faster at producing their first words and at accumulating larger vocabularies. Researchers have long believed that girls have superior verbal and written language abilities to boys. This advantage even mildly persists into adulthood. However, there has been no clear evidence of a biological basis that may account for these differences. Previous studies have attempted to determine a biological component of these sex differences. Some studies have suggested a difference in laterality of activation during language tasks in adults, in that

To account for any other variables that could affect performance, they controlled for differences in task, stimulus modality, age, and accuracy. They wanted to know: Is there a biological meaning as to why females generally perform better on language tasks compared to males? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers looked at brain activity in 31 boys and in 31 girls aged 9 to 15 as they performed spelling and writing language tasks. They ran two experiments, one that presented information visually and one that presented information through spoken

Boys, on the other hand, showed a lot of activity in regions tied to visual functions. They concluded that girls process visual language in a more general network whereas boys process visual language in a visual-specific area of the brain. They were able to rule out any alternative explanations because they used a complex statistical model that accounted for any differences in age, linguistic judgment, modality of word presentation, and performance accuracy. By controlling for all these factors, it made it clear that the differences they found were not due to any confounding variables. The second experiment looked at auditory language judgment. It was done four weeks later using the same children. It was essentially the same exact procedure used in the previous experiment. The children participated in the spelling and rhyming tasks except this time the words were presented out loud. The duration of each word was 500-800 ms with the second word presented 1000 ms after the first. The variables that were manipulated were gender, task type, and age (9, 11, 13, or 15 years). The variable that was measured was brain images using the same fMRI