We have obtained, after statistical analysis of huge data for child speech (09-62 months) a big, statistically important difference between boys and girls in the use of different noun concept categories. We cannot explain the result for the moment, can someone advice, help, join the work, please?
Hi Velina,
The specifics of your findings and how closely they relate to the work of others is a bit out of my area for citing specific studies. You may look at the work of Hart and Risley, in their two books (Hart, B. and T. R. Risley (1995). Meaningful differences in everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD, Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. and Hart, B. and T. R. Risley (1999). The social world of children learning to talk. Baltimore, MD, Paul E. Brookes Publishing Co). Although these are not especially linguistically-oriented (but, rather, they use more quantification than description they may have something similar...at least they also have a large data base.
Although this may be well known to you, I think I would suggest that based upon the most current "usage-based" theories of language acquisition or construction, it would seem that the differences -- if they are sustainable -- are due to the types of opportunities and interactions provided to the boys versus the girls (I assume the advantage is to the girls?). That is, since social development appears to help drive language acquisition by providing more opportunities, interactions, and use by the child, then those with more opportunities and with more expectations attached to them have more usage -- particularly context-based opportunities that can apply an appropriate model when the child tries and fails to use some aspect of language. Consequently, the cultural/societal differences between the expectations and opportunities/interactions in boys and girls should play a big role. The two best books I know dealing with usage-based explanations of acquisition are Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a Language. A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. and Nelson, K. (2007). Young Minds in Social Worlds. Experience, meaning, and memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Both exceptions works.
Hope this helps.
Thank so much, Jack!
I will look in the sourses you suggest, some I knew, but the most part I did not, Thank you!
I think in our result there is something related to the "usage-based" theories of language acquisition or construction, The differences are not as one may suppose - the advantage is to the girls. I have to explain - we have started to check a set of supposed categories of noun-meaning, related to a model where the newborn "has" the initial potential for discriminating the world from the point of view of actor in the environment (Barsalou 2003) and having in mind the discouvered common for the individuals semantic activation of the brain (by fMRI). We have manually annotated all the nouns and proper nouns in the children data to this set of categories. For some categories boys and girls have different starting points and "develop" in oposite way. In general, we have not found advantages for girls or for boys. Just - they are different.
Example - for the category "body parts" (it can not be included in the text, sorry, I attach it)
Thank you a lot, Harshvardhan Singh!
The sources you suggest are helpful, thank you! It becomes more and more clear that there is no an aeasy-to-imagine expnation.
Hi Velina!
Research by Isabel Gauthier and colleagues at Vanderbilt into object-recognition and categorization has revealed interesting gender-related differences, particularly by way of their Vanderbilt Expertise Test (VET). Although this work is not specifically targetted on first-language acquisition in infancy, I am wondering if it offers clues relevant to your question? This paper describes the VET and gender-specific findings:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698912002313
Numerous further publications by Gauthier and co-researchers in their RG profiles...
Warmest!
Hi Richard!
Thank you!
I was reading again and again. Hm. Very interesting. Very - very. Thank you!
Wormest!
Hi, in our recent norming study of the Portuguese CDI, we also found robust gender differences (expressive vocabulary, complex word production, word combinations). The paper is currently in press. I'm sending it attached (DOI: 10.1177/0142723716648867).
best,
Sonia Frota
Dear Sonya,
! saw this reply one year later... I don't know how could this happen.
THANK YOU A LOT for the paper.
Velina
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