Productive vocabulary size development in children aged 18-24 months - gender differences

Several studies have shown slight differences in language skills between genders, favouring females. In order to investigate gender differences in speech production for Swedish children, the productive vocabulary size of 295 children, aged 18-24 months, was measured by the validated instrument SECDI-2. The size of the productive vocabulary was found to grow rapidly during this age. Significant gender differences were found at 21 and 24 months, but not at 18 months. The girls’ mean scores were higher.