A four-year longitudinal investigation of gender differences in highly specified linguistic and reading operations in 87 children was con ducted in the period before, during, and after reading acquisition. A central focus is the development of automatization within these operations. Results indicate a clear distinction between a sustained male advantage in vocabulary and semantic processess and an early female advantage in rate for basic language and reading processing. The findings point to different, gender-influenced sequences in reading acquisition by some females and males. The relationship between these findings and the predominance of males with early reading failure is hypothesized.
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