[PS-1.17] Sex differences in the language-guided looking task 18 months after birth

Becker, A. 1, 2 , Schild, U. 2 , Habets, B. 3 & Friedrich, C. 2

1 Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Hamburg, Germany
2 Developmental Psychology, University of Tübingen, Germany
3 Biological Psychology and cognitive neuroscience, University of Bielefeld, Germany

Sex differences in early language acquisition are evident in a range of tasks including verbal learning, rule learning and sound discrimination. An advantage for girls shows up as early as four weeks after birth. Here, we tracked eye-movements of 18-month-olds German boys and girls to test whether incremental word form processing differs between the sexes at this age. We presented the toddlers with the onsets of early-learned German words (e.g. first syllable of ?baby?). Displays of the primed target word (e.g. a baby) and a distractor image (e.g. a rabbit) followed the word onset prime. Girls compared to boys showed a stronger tendency to fixate the target object. Furthermore, more girls than boys showed an overall proportional positive response to the individual targets. This indicates that sex differences in incremental word processing in the second year of life. Fixations of emotional faces will serve as a control for general fixations latencies in girls and boys.