It is a common feeling that girls speak earlier than boys; however, whether or not there are gender differences in early language acquisition remains controversial. The present paper aims to review the research on gender effects in early language acquisition and development, to determine whether, and from which age, an advantage for girls does eventually emerge. The focus is on the production of actions and communicative gestures, and early lexical comprehension and production, by girls and boys. The data from various studies that were conducted with direct and indirect tools suggest that some gender differences in actions, gesture, and lexical development depend on the interactions of different factors. Studies differ in terms of age ranges, sample sizes, and tools used, and the girl advantage is often slight and/or not evident at all ages considered. Statistical significance for gender differences appears to depend on the greater individual variability among boys, with respect to girls, which results in a greater number of boys classified as children with poor verbal ability. Biological (e.g., different maturational rates), neuropsychological (e.g., different cognitive strategies in solving tasks), and cultural (e.g., differences in the way parents relate socially to boys and girls) factors appear to interact, to create feedback loops of mutual reinforcement.

中文翻译：

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语言发展早期的性别差异。一些证据和可能的解释

人们普遍认为女孩比男孩说话早；然而，早期语言习得是否存在性别差异仍存在争议。本文旨在回顾有关早期语言习得和发展的性别影响的研究，以确定女孩的优势是否最终会出现，以及从哪个年龄开始出现。重点是女孩和男孩的动作和交流手势的产生，以及早期词汇的理解和产生。使用直接和间接工具进行的各种研究的数据表明，行为、手势和词汇发展方面的一些性别差异取决于不同因素的相互作用。研究在年龄范围、样本量和使用的工具方面有所不同，女孩的优势在所有年龄段的人中往往是轻微的和/或不明显的。性别差异的统计显着性似乎取决于男孩与女孩之间更大的个体差异，这导致更多的男孩被归类为语言能力差的儿童。生物（例如，不同的成熟率）、神经心理学（例如，解决任务时的不同认知策略）和文化（例如，父母与男孩和女孩的社交方式不同）似乎相互作用，形成相互强化的反馈循环.