Why Girls Are Better at Language

Study after study has found that girls have better language skills than boys, and scientists now think they've found a biological reason why, Scientific American reports. Researchers discovered that girls showed more activity in the language part of their brains, which deciphers abstract encoding, than boys. The boys had more activity in the regions of the brain linked to auditory and visual function.

The findings suggest that boys learn language best through a combination of oral and visual teaching, whereas girls can learn via either method. "It suggests girls are learning in a more abstract form, and that's the ideal objective when we're teaching things," noted the co-author of the study, published in Neuropsychologia. He said the study could have major implications for classroom learning. The team now hopes to discover if the differences continue into adulthood. (More children stories.)