Does sex influence the age of acquisition of common names? A contrast of different semantic categories

Our findings suggest that the male advantage for tools and vehicles reported in the literature on verbal fluency and naming tasks is strongly related to the earlier age in males of name acquisition for these categories, and possibly to their higher familiarity. On the contrary, the female advantage for plant life knowledge, which becomes evident later in life, has a still undefined nature and only a dubious relationship to familiarity, although it is sufficient to cause an overrepresentation of males among patients affected by a category specific impairment of biological categories, especially of plant life knowledge.