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Why Girls Are Better at Language

Posted Mar 6, 08 11:12 AM CST in Science & Health 

(Newser) – Study after study has found that girls have better language skills than boys, and scientists now think they've found a biological reason why, Scientific American reports. Researchers discovered that girls showed more activity in the language part of their brains, which deciphers abstract encoding, than boys. The boys had more activity in the regions of the brain linked to auditory and visual function.

The findings suggest that boys learn language best through a combination of oral and visual teaching, whereas girls can learn via either method. "It suggests girls are learning in a more abstract form, and that's the ideal objective when we're teaching things," noted the co-author of the study, published in Neuropsychologia. He said the study could have major implications for classroom learning. The team now hopes to discover if the differences continue into adulthood.

Source Scientific American

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Girls completing a language task for the researchers showed greater activity in brain areas implicated specifically in language encoding. Boys, on the other hand, showed a lot of activity in regions tied...   (Shutter Stock)
The study of language processing in children's brains could have major implications on how things are taught in classrooms, as it found boys learn better with a combination of visual and oral teaching,...   (Associated Press)
The study took a group of girls and boys and tested how their brains responded to language tasks.   (Shutter Stock)
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children  • education  • research  • language  • neurology  • neuroscience  • fMRI


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