Girls tend to develop language skills than boys

Updated on: Monday, January 30, 2012

Researchers have long agreed that girls tend to develop language skills faster than boys.

Now, a study has come up with a biological explanation as to why female babies generally outpace their male counterparts.

An international team, led by the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, has claimed that boys who are exposed to high levels of testosterone before birth are actually twice as likely to experience delays in language development.

In their study, scientists used umbilical cord blood to explore the presence of testosterone when the language-related regions of a foetus' brain are undergoing a critical period of growth, 'Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry' reported.

Andrew Whitehouse, who led the team, said the finding is significant as it gives a biological explanation for why boys language development differs to that in girls. "An estimated 12 per cent of toddlers experience significant delays in their language development," he said in a release.

Dr Whitehouse said the team wanted to test if this could be due to prenatal exposure to sex-steroids like testosterone.

Male foetuses are known to have 10 times the circulating levels of testosterone compared to females. The team proposed that higher levels of exposure to prenatal testosterone could increase the likelihood of language development delays.

The team measured levels of testosterone in the umbilical cord blood of 767 newborns before examining their language ability at one, two and three years of age.

The results showed boys with high levels of testosterone in cord blood were between two and three times more likely to experience language delay. However, the opposite effect was found in girls where high levels of testosterone in cord blood were associated with a decreased risk of language delay.

"Potentially, this could help us to identify children at higher risk for language delay at an earlier age, increasing the opportunity for effective therapies," he said.

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