References to people in the communications of female and male youths with mental retardation.
Nonspeaking girls with ID show far fewer person references than speaking peers, so adjust AAC goals accordingly.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team watched taped conversations of teens with intellectual disability.
They counted how often each youth said names like "Mom" or pronouns like "she."
Kids were grouped by sex and by whether they used speech or other modes.
What they found
Girls who talked out loud named people more than boys who talked out loud.
That pattern matches what we see in kids without disabilities.
Girls who did not speak showed far fewer person references than any other group.
How this fits with other research
Konstantareas et al. (1999) checked the same tapes again and ruled out two rival ideas: adult coaching and grammar level. The girl-boy gap stayed put.
Tavares et al. (2015) later showed that younger students with ID struggle to figure out who "he" or "she" points to in short stories. Together the papers warn us not to assume person words are easy for these learners.
Laugeson et al. (2014) looks like a clash: in sexual knowledge tests, boys with ID outscored girls, flipping the usual girl advantage. The difference is domain. Talking about people is social habit; recalling facts is taught knowledge. Different skills, different gender slopes.
Why it matters
When you assess a nonspeaking girl with ID, do not expect the same social chatter you hear from speaking girls. Write goals that build person references through her AAC system, and track both frequency and clarity.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Gender-related differences have consistently been reported in the language of adults and children with no disabilities. One well-replicated finding is that females discuss people and relationships more often than do males, particularly in conversations with other females. These stylistic variations in language are considered to have implications for the adaptive functioning of language users, most particularly females. Although studied thus far only in nondisabled individuals, such issues of language style use may be of equal or greater concern for those with mental retardation. How does a cognitive impairment intensify or reduce gender-linked language styles and their effects? Language transcripts were obtained from eight male and eight female participants with retardation, interacting separately with one male and one female adult partner. Half of the participants used speech as their primary mode of communication: the others relied on vocalization, gesture, or augmented modes. Participants using speech showed gender-linked language patterns similar to nondisabled individuals, with females discussing people significantly more often than males. Females using nonspeech modes, in contrast, showed a severe reduction in person-referencing that was not accountable by their expressive speech limitations.
Research in developmental disabilities, 1998 · doi:10.1016/s0891-4222(98)00005-5