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Gender differences in language development in French Canadian children between 8 and 30 months of age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2009

CAROLINE BOUCHARD ,
NATACHA TRUDEAU ,
ANN SUTTON ,
MARIE-CLAUDE BOUDREAULT  and
JOANE DENEAULT
CAROLINE BOUCHARD*
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal
NATACHA TRUDEAU
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal et Hôpital Sainte-Justine
ANN SUTTON
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal et Hôpital Sainte-Justine
MARIE-CLAUDE BOUDREAULT
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal et Hôpital Sainte-Justine
JOANE DENEAULT
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Rimouski
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Caroline Bouchard, Département d'éducation et pédagogie, Université du Québec à Montréal, C.P. 8888, Succursale Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 3P8, Canada. E-mail: bouchard.caroline@uqam.ca
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Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the language of girls and boys between 8 and 30 months of age, using the Quebec French version of The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. The findings from this parental report measure confirm those of earlier research, which showed the linguistic superiority of girls over boys at a young age. More specifically, the results show that girls produce significantly more words than boys; their utterances contain a greater number of grammatical forms, and are more complex syntactically. On the qualitative level, the data illustrate distinctive characteristics associated with gender in the acquisition of the first 100 words. These findings suggest that caution is necessary when assessing young children to interpret performance in light of factors that may contribute to it, including gender. These results are discussed in light of whether separate normative data are warranted for young boys and girls learning Canadian French.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , October 2009 , pp. 685 - 707
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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