Baby Boys “Talk” More Than Girls In Their First Year But Girls Catch Up, Says Study
It is believed by many that women have an advantage over men in language. But according to a new study, males have shown to produce more speech-like vocalizations than females during their first year. Baby boys make more sounds than girls, including more statements, squeals, vowel-like sounds, grunts, and short word-like sounds. These speech precursors are later replaced with early words and eventually complete phrases and sentences. In the second year, however, girls make about 7% more sounds than boys.
The increase in vocalizations in baby boys goes away by 16 months, while their increased level of physical activity doesn’t go away. The researchers suggest that this might fit with an evolutionary theory that babies make as many sounds early on to express their well-being and improve their own chances of survival. However, more studies are needed to understand how caregivers react to the baby’s sounds.
The Research Findings on Baby Boys and Girls
According to the research, baby boys made 10% more statements in their first year compared to girls. The sample size was “huge,” including more than 450,000 hours of all-day recordings of 5,899 babies using a device the size of an iPod. The study confirmed earlier findings from a much smaller study by the same team. The differences were seen despite the fact that the number of words spoken by the adults caring for these babies was higher for girls in both years compared to boys.
Possible Explanations for Sex Differences
Although they were surprised to find differences between males and females, Oller and his colleagues suggest that the apparent early advantage of baby boys in language development might be because boys are more vulnerable to dying in the first year than girls. “The pressure on special fitness cueing is less for both boys and girls” by the second year of life, as mortality rates drop dramatically across the board.
The researchers also suggest that baby boys might be more vocal early simply because they’re more active in general. However, the increase in vocalizations in baby boys goes away by 16 months, while their increased level of physical activity doesn’t go away.
Caregivers’ Reactions to Baby’s Sounds
More studies are needed to understand how caregivers react to the baby’s sounds. The researchers anticipate that caregivers will show perceptible reactions of interest and delight in the speech-like sounds, indicating that the baby’s fitness cue elicits real feelings of caring and willingness to invest in the well-being of babies who vocalize effectively. They wondered how caregivers would react to sounds resembling the speech of boys and girls. But they may need to tell them which babies are which because we do not even know if the sex can be discerned from vocalizations alone.
Possible Implications for Evolutionary Foundations of Language
The research findings might have interesting implications for the evolutionary foundations of language, according to the researchers. Baby boys might have to produce signals of vocal aptitude so that they might survive through language, becoming more vocal during their first year. Still, girls catch up and surpass boys by the end of the second year.
The researchers suggest that studies might be done to see how caregivers react to the baby’s sounds, particularly to see if a difference in reaction to baby’s vocalizations exists between boys and girls during the first year of their life.
Additional piece:
The debate about gender differences is ongoing and multifaceted. The study sheds light on the possible differences in the development of language in males and females. In addition, it raises important questions about language development, such as how caregivers react to the baby’s sounds.
One of the possible explanations for the sex differences in the number of vocalizations made by babies is that males are more active in general. But does that mean boys and girls are physically active in the same way, or are there differences in the type of activity that each gender engages in? Alternatively, there is an evolutionary theory that boys make more sounds early on to express their well-being and improve their own chances of survival.
The findings might also have implications for understanding how to encourage language development in both male and female babies.
The study also presents an interesting paradox in our understanding. Despite the widely held belief that women have an advantage over men in language, baby boys produce more speech-like vocalizations in their first year than their female counterparts.
Overall, the study highlights the complexities of understanding the development of language and the role of gender differences in that process. It also points to how much more research is needed to understand and explain the differences between males and females in language development.
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Young babies make lots of squeals, vowel-like sounds, grunts, and short word-like sounds like “ba” or “aga.” Those speech precursors or “protophones” are later replaced with early words and eventually complete phrases and sentences. While some babies are naturally more “talkative” than others, a new study reported in iScience May 31 confirms that there are differences between males and females in the number of these sounds.
In general, they found that baby boys “talk” more than girls during their first year. While the research confirms earlier findings from a much smaller study by the same team, they remain a surprise. That’s because there’s a long-held, common belief that women have a reliable advantage over men in language. They also have interesting implications for the evolutionary foundations of language, the researchers say.
“It is widely believed that women have a small but discernible advantage over men in language,” says D. Kimbrough Oller of the University of Memphis, Tennessee. “But in the first year, males have been shown to produce more speech-like vocalizations than females.”
However, the apparent early advantage of baby boys in language development does not last. “While boys showed higher rates of vocalization in the first year, girls caught up with and surpassed boys by the end of the second year,” says Oller.
Oller and his colleagues did not intend to analyze the sex difference at all. His main interest is in the origins of language in childhood. If they had to guess, they would have predicted that girls could make more sounds than boys. But they got the same result in a previous article published in current biology in 2020.
In the new study, they sought to see if they could discern the same pattern in a much larger study. Oller says the sample size in question is “huge” and includes more than 450,000 hours of all-day recordings of 5,899 babies, using a device the size of an iPod. Those recordings were automatically analyzed to count the expressions of babies and adults during the first 2 years of life.
“This is the largest sample for any study done on language development, to the best of our knowledge,” says Oller.
Overall, the data showed that baby boys made 10% more statements in their first year compared to girls. In the second year, the difference changed direction, with girls making about 7% more sounds than boys. Those differences were seen despite the fact that the number of words spoken by the adults caring for these babies was higher for girls in both years compared to boys.
The researchers say it’s possible that baby boys are more vocal early simply because they’re more active in general. But the data doesn’t seem to support that, given that the increase in vocalizations in baby boys goes away by 16 months, while their increased level of physical activity doesn’t go away. But the findings might fit with an evolutionary theory that babies make as many sounds early on to express their well-being and improve their own chances of survival, Oller suggests.
Why, then, would boys be more vocal than girls during the first year and not after? “We think it may be because boys are more vulnerable to dying in the first year than girls, and since so many male deaths occur in the first year, boys may have been under especially high selection pressure to produce signals. of vocal aptitude,” says Oller. she says. By the second year of life, as mortality rates drop dramatically across the board, she added, “the pressure on special fitness cueing is less for both boys and girls.”
More studies are needed to understand how caregivers react to the baby’s sounds, according to the researchers.
“We anticipate that caregivers will show perceptible reactions of interest and delight in the speech-like sounds, indicators that the baby’s fitness cue elicits real feelings of caring and willingness to invest in the well-being of babies who vocalize especially well.” effective,” says Oller. “We wondered how caregivers would react to sounds resembling the speech of boys and girls. But they may need to tell them which babies are which, because we don’t even know if the sex can be discerned from vocalizations alone.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230531150135.htm
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