Gender differences in child word learning

• We examined gender differences in children's word learning.
• We found superior performance in girls for phonologically-familiar novel words.
• We found superior performance in girls for words paired with familiar referents.
• No gender differences were found when novel words involved unfamiliar information.
• Findings indicate that girls make greater use of long-term knowledge to support short-term learning than boys.

In prior work with adults, women were found to outperform men on a paired-associates word-learning task, but only when learning phonologically-familiar novel words. The goal of the present work was to examine whether similar gender differences in word learning would be observed in children. In addition to manipulating phonological familiarity, referent familiarity was also manipulated. Children between the ages of 5 and 7 learned phonologically-familiar or phonologically-unfamiliar novel words in association with pictures of familiar referents (animals) or unfamiliar referents (aliens). Retention was tested via a forced-choice recognition measure administered immediately after the learning phase. Analyses of retention data revealed stronger phonological and referent familiarity effects in girls than in boys. Moreover, girls outperformed boys only when learning phonologically-familiar novel words and when learning novel words in association with familiar referents. These findings are interpreted to suggest that females are more likely than males to recruit native-language phonological and semantic knowledge during novel word learning.