Developmental and Gender Differences in the Production of the Past Tense in Spanish Children

This study investigates gender differences in children’s linguistic development of Spanish past tense verbs. Two groups of 30 children, each consisting of 15 girls and 15 boys, were studied: Preschool children (5 years old) and 1st grade (7 years old). Participants carried out an elicitation task where a verbal change from present to past tense was required. Frequency and regularity variables were introduced as experimental factors to study differences between gender and age. The results showed that morphological rules were more successfully applied in 1st grade than in preschool children. Youngest participants showed a greatest influence of lexical variables, such as verb frequency and produced more omission and repetition errors. Gender differences only appeared in the oldest children, with girls being more affected by verb frequency and regularity. Girls also demonstrated a broader vocabulary than boys as shown by the qualitative analyses.