Abstract
The German gender star is a form of gender inclusive language that uses an asterisk to merge masculine and feminine role noun endings (e.g., Choreograf*in, ‘choreographerinclusive’). It was created to counter the male bias of masculine forms intended as generic and to represent all genders more inclusively. This study examined how role nouns with the gender star are processed in written and spoken German using a semantic priming paradigm. In Experiment 1, German participants were primed with masculine 1 (Choreograf), feminine (Choreografin), and star noun forms (Choreograf*in) in printed form, before identifying the gender of a following pronoun as feminine (sie, ‘she’) or masculine (er, ‘he’). Experiment 2 presented the same prime forms auditorily with the star form realized as a glottal stop (Choreografʔin), produced by either a conventionally feminine-sounding or masculine-sounding voice. Congruency between prime and target gender for masculine noun forms (Choreograf–er) facilitated response times in both experiments and for feminine noun forms (Choreografin–sie) in Experiment 2. Response times for the masculine and feminine pronouns following the inclusive prime forms did not differ significantly in either experiment, indicating that these forms can be associated with both female and male referents in reading and listening, with the gender of the voice having no further effect on processing.
German is a grammatical gender language with three gender values (feminine, masculine, and neuter), with grammatical gender cues such as determiners and noun endings playing a key role in assigning gender to human referents (Esaulova et al., 2014; Irmen & Schumann, 2011; Stahlberg et al., 2007). However, an androcentric bias emerges due to the asymmetrical use of masculine forms, which serve both as specific markers for men and as generic forms when referent gender is unknown, unspecified, or in cases of mixed-gender groups (Gygax et al., 2019). The generic usage, the so-called masculine generics, has been found to reduce the cognitive availability of non-male individuals and foster male-biased mental representations (Glim et al., 2025; Gygax et al., 2008, 2021; Misersky et al., 2019; Rothermund & Strack, 2024; Stahlberg et al., 2007).
The male bias and the resulting linguistic invisibility of women and non-binary individuals caused by masculine generics have prompted efforts to develop alternative forms that are part of what is broadly referred to as gender-inclusive language (Gabriel et al., 2018). In German, one of the most prominent gender-inclusive forms is the gender star, which was introduced in 2009 and aims to represent female, male, and non-binary genders equally (Diewald & Steinhauer, 2020; Fischer & Wolf, 2009). This form is created by adding the feminine ending -in to the masculine form (e.g., Lehrer, ‘teachermasc’), with the asterisk inserted before the feminine ending, as in Lehrer*in. In spoken language, the star form is produced as a glottal stop (/le:ʁəʔın/, Lehrer*in, ‘teacher’, Slavik et al., 2018). Despite its widespread use, it is unclear whether the gender star form truly elicits gender-balanced mental representations, as it has previously been associated with female-biased language processing in written and in spoken language (Glim et al., 2025; Körner et al., 2022, 2024). Moreover, most research has examined its use in written language, whilst research on its spoken form with the glottal stop remains understudied.
The present research sought to extend previous findings by directly comparing the written and spoken modalities and examining whether the star form achieves indeed unbiased language processing. In two semantic priming tasks, we investigated how nouns presented in the star form, compared to feminine and masculine forms, are processed by participants in reading and listening, while also testing whether the gender of the speaker affects gender inferences during listening. This research aimed to enhance our understanding of how the star form functions across modalities and provide evidence on the ongoing debate about gender-inclusive language effectiveness.
Processing of Gender-Inclusive Language Forms
Various languages have developed strategies to achieve inclusive processing. These strategies include the introduction of new gender-neutral forms and orthographic innovations of existing binary forms. Swedish, for example, introduced the gender-neutral pronoun hen in addition to the binary hon (she) and han (he), which can be used generically as well as a transgender pronoun (Gustafsson Sendén et al., 2015). Despite initial negative attitudes that considered it distracting and unnecessary (see for example Vergoossen et al., 2020), hen has been shown to eliminate male bias and heighten the salience of non-binary individuals (Gustafsson Sendén et al., 2015; Lindqvist et al., 2019; Tavits & Pérez, 2019). English has also seen growing acceptance of singular they as a gender-neutral form representing binary and non-binary genders (Bradley et al., 2019; Lindqvist et al., 2019; Renström et al., 2024), while the neo-pronoun ze remains less widely adopted, but showing similar bias-reduction effects (Bradley et al., 2019; Harris et al., 2017; Lindqvist et al., 2019; Renström, 2025). In Romance languages, orthographic innovations have been adopted. For instance, Spanish uses -x and -e noun endings instead of the generic masculine -o (e.g., Lxs maestrxs/Les maestres vs. Los maestors), which can reduce male bias and promote inclusive processing, without hindering comprehension (Irizarry et al., 2025; Stetie & Zunino, 2022, 2024). In French, the mid-dot form (caissier·ère·s, ‘cashiersinclusive’) has been employed, with a dot merging masculine and feminine noun endings. While the mid-dot seems to increase women's visibility (Spinelli et al., 2023; Tibblin, Van De Weijer, et al., 2023; Xiao et al., 2023), it might elicit a female bias, as it increases the morphological salience of the feminine suffix (Tibblin, Granfeldt, et al., 2023). It should be noted that unlike the aforementioned non-binary forms, the mid-dot form is a binary gender-inclusive form, functioning as an abbreviation of pair forms (e.g., Les caissiers et les caissières ‘the cashiersmasc and cashiersfem’).
In German, several gender-inclusive language strategies have also been proposed. While early approaches focused on increasing the visibility of women within binary frameworks through pair forms (Studentinnen und Studenten, ‘female and male students’) and capital I forms (StudentInnen) (Hansen et al., 2016; Horvath & Sczesny, 2016; Keith et al., 2022; Körner et al., 2022; Schunack & Binanzer, 2022; Stahlberg et al., 2001; Stahlberg & Sczesny, 2001), more recent approaches involve the use of neographies, special characters that challenge conventional orthography to represent binary and non-binary gender identities (Ivanov & Lange, 2024; Meuleneers, 2024; Ochs & Rüdiger, 2025). The gender star (Student*innen), the medial colon (Student:innen), and the gender gap (Student_innen) forms are examples of such neographies (Ivanov & Lange, 2024; Ochs & Rüdiger, 2025). Among these forms, the star and the colon forms appear to be the most widely adopted within the queer community, as well as the media (Ivanov & Lange, 2024; Löhr, 2021, 2022; Ochs & Rüdiger, 2025), with an increase in their use following the 2018 reform in Germany's civil status law introducing the third gender option “divers” (diverse) (Ivanov & Lange, 2024; Link, 2024; Ochs & Rüdiger, 2025; Waldendorf, 2024). The neographies have been criticized for being harder to process for people with cognitive and visual impairment as well as learners of German (Kurz & De Mulder, 2023). However, to date, only the star form has been examined in psycholinguistic research on language processing.
Gender Star Form
Although the star form has been adopted by various educational and political institutions (Schneider, 2022; Waldendorf, 2024), it has been found to potentially reduce clarity in comprehension. Research on the processing of this form suggests that the effect on comprehensibility can depend on structural complexity. While simple singular and plural forms (e.g., Spieler*in, ‘player’; Spieler∗innen, ‘players’) do not impair comprehension compared to masculine forms (Friedrich et al., 2021; Pabst & Kollmayer, 2023; Zacharski et al., 2025), more complex structures involving preceding determiners and pronouns (der∗die Angreifer∗in, ‘themasc∗thefem fe∗male attacker’; er*sie, ‘he*she’) tend to reduce comprehensibility (Friedrich et al., 2021). However, familiarity appears to overcome this difficulty, with easy recognition of a star form as a word increasing with exposure (Zacharski et al., 2025).
Mixed Evidence for Mental Representations of Women and Men
The impact of the star form on mental representations of women and men has been examined in both binary gender and non-binary gender tasks, with contradictory findings reported. Starting with binary gender tasks, for example, asking participants to name individuals who could belong to occupational and social categories, the gender star appears to increase (but not surpass) the availability of female mental representations over generic masculine forms and even pair forms (Keith et al., 2022; Kurz & De Mulder, 2023). Additionally, the gender star can attenuate the influence of gender stereotypes, with higher estimates of women in stereotypically masculine categories when presented with the star form (e.g., Bauarbeiter*innen, ‘construction workers’, Schunack & Binanzer, 2022).
While these results suggest gender neutrality for the star form, other studies found that it can elicit a female bias. In evaluation experiments, Körner et al. (2022) presented participants with two sentences: the first sentence introduced a group of people employing masculine, pair, and star forms (e.g., Die Komiker/Komiker*innen/Komiker und Komikerinnen gingen zum Abendessen, ‘The comediansmasc/comediansinclusive/male comedians and female comedians went to dinner’), and the second sentence provided information about a female or a male subset of the group (e.g., Aufgrund der frühen Uhrzeit schienen einige der Frauen/Männer bleiben zu wollen, ‘Because of the early hour, some of the women/men seemed to want to stay’). As expected, when a masculine noun form was presented in the first sentence, participants were more inclined to and faster in accepting continuations about men as more sensible. Interestingly, when the noun in the first sentence was presented in a star form, continuations referring to women were judged correct more frequently and more quickly than those referring to men, indicating a female bias. Along the same lines and employing similar stimuli, Glim et al. (2025) reported higher P600 amplitude for men after the star form compared to women, suggesting that the neural processing imbalances caused by the star form might be attributed to its similarity with the feminine form. This pattern corroborates findings on the capital I form eliciting a female bias due its resemblance with feminine forms (Braun et al., 2005), suggesting that morphological similarity influences gender processing.
The binary judgement tasks employed in these studies might have reinforced a female-biased reading of the star form. Examining gender as a non-binary category, Zacharski and Ferstl (2023) report evidence for inclusive mental representations elicited by the gender star: in their linguistic-visual paradigm, star forms (e.g., Kosmetiker*in) received the highest acceptance rates following non-binary images and were also accepted more frequently for images of women and men compared to binary forms (e.g., Kosmeriker and Kosmetikerin, respectively). Not surprisingly, this suggests that the task design may furthermore influence in how far the star form is processed as biased or neutral, highlighting the need for systematic investigation across different paradigms.
Gender Star Form in Spoken Language
To date, there is little available literature on the use of the star form in spoken language. Previous research has demonstrated that it is indeed pronounced with the insertion of a glottal stop, resulting in the [ʔin] suffix (Belz et al., 2023; Mooshammer & Belz, 2024; Slavik et al., 2018; Völkening, 2022). This pattern is consistent with German prosodic rules, as the insertion of a glottal stop before vowel-initial suffixes is obligatory (Völkening, 2022). The presence of the glottal stop marks the boundaries of vowel-initial phonological words and prevents resyllabification, as in compound nouns, e.g., Stein[ʔ]obst (Nübling & Lind, 2021; Wiese, 1996). In the case of the gender-inclusive forms, the [ʔin] suffix prevents the resyllabification of the final consonant of the first phonological word (Lehrer) with the vowel-initial syllable (-in), which would yield Leh.re.rin, the feminine form. Instead, adding the glottal stop results in Lehrer[ʔ]in, with [ʔin] functioning as an independent phonological word, creating a distinct form that is different from the feminine variant (Völkening, 2022).
Despite the glottal stop being familiar to German speakers, previous findings about the comprehensibility of gender-inclusive forms produced with the glottal stop are mixed. Jöckel et al. (2021) found that encountering the glottal stop decreased comprehensibility, which in turn, led to emotionally negative reactions towards gender-inclusive forms with this feature. In contrast, no such impairment was reported by Friedrich et al. (2022) when participants watched video lectures containing either plural masculine forms (Leser, ‘readersmasc’) or plural gender-inclusive forms produced with glottal stops (Leserʔinnen, ‘readersinclusive’), as participants’ ratings showed no reduction in comprehensibility or appeal.
The glottal stop has also been examined in relation to online processing and mental representations of sex/gender. Körner et al. (2024) employed an evaluation task in which participants first listened to a sentence with generic masculine, generic feminine, or glottal stop plural nouns (Die Sportler/Sportlerinnen/Sportlerʔinnen überquerten den Rasen., ‘The athletesmasc/fem/inclusive crossed the turf.’), followed by continuations about women or men (Vorher hatte sich die Mehrheit der Frauen/Männer aufgewärmt., ‘Previously, the majority of the women/men had been warming up.’). Participants’ task was to evaluate whether the second sentence was a sensible continuation of the first. Accuracy scores indicated a female bias for the glottal stop, with participants accepting women-related continuations as sensible more often than men-related continuations. Reaction times for sentences including women continuations were also faster compared to sentences about men, though not significantly. Interestingly, the female bias induced by the glottal stop was of equal magnitude to the male bias that arose from the generic masculine form, but weaker than the feminine bias elicited by the generic feminine form.
It is noteworthy that all sentences used by Körner et al. (2024) were presented in a feminine-sounding voice, which might have amplified the biases for both the generic feminine and the glottal stop forms. The role of speaker gender voice has not been treated in much detail, despite previous research indicating that voice carries speaker identity-related information, such as gender and age, which is accessed by listeners during speech comprehension (Belin et al., 2004; Cerrato et al., 2000; Labutina et al., 2024). Notably, previous research has shown that the auditory processing of grammatical gender is influenced by the gender typicality of speaker's gender, indicating that a mismatch between the grammatical gender of the word spoken and the gender of the speaker can inhibit processing, as shown by behavioral and ERP measures (Alekseeva et al., 2022; Andonova, 2013; Casado et al., 2018; Hanulíková & Carreiras, 2015; Vitevitch et al., 2013). It seems, therefore, that in grammatical gender languages the lexical candidates with the same grammatical gender as the sex/gender of the speaker are activated more strongly compared to the lexical candidates of the opposite gender value (Casado et al., 2018).
The Present Study
Previous research has found contrasting results on the representations of women and men elicited by the star form. Additionally, no study to date has employed semantic priming to examine both written and spoken language using the same materials, nor directly compared voice gender effects. Given these gaps, the present study aims to answer three research questions. First, whether the star form elicits balanced or female-biased gender processing. 2 Second, whether there are systematic differences in how the star form is processed in written versus spoken language, where it is realized as a glottal stop. Third, whether speaker gender influences gender inferences during glottal stop form processing.
Experiment 1 used a visual semantic priming task with singular German masculine, feminine, and star noun forms as visual primes (e.g., Choreograf/Choreografin/Choreograf*in, ‘choreographermasc, choreographerfem, choreographerinclusive’). Experiment 2 used the same stimuli but presented the prime forms auditorily with the glottal stop for the inclusive form (e.g., Choreograf/Choreografin/Choreografʔin). In both experiments, primes were followed by written third person feminine and masculine target pronouns (sie, ‘she’, er, ‘he’), and participants had to identify the gender of the pronoun, with gender decision latencies being measured.
Based on previous research, the following hypotheses are formulated. First, for feminine and masculine forms, gender congruent pronouns facilitate processing, with faster response times compared to gender-incongruent pronouns. Second, both the written gender star and the glottal stop elicit a female bias due to the morphological and phonological similarity with the feminine form, with slower response times for the masculine pronoun than the feminine one. Third, voice gender influences processing, with slower response times for the masculine pronoun compared to the feminine following the glottal stop in the feminine-sounding voice condition. The masculine-sounding voice attenuates the potential bias, with comparable response times for both pronouns following the glottal stop.
Experiment 1
Method
Participants
One hundred nine native speakers of German, all living in Germany (67 females, 38 males, 1 non-binary, 3 undisclosed; mean age: 26.29, SD: 6.88, range: 19–61), participated in the online experiment. Seven of the participants (6.42%) were excluded from further analyses because they did not meet the following study criteria: 18–35 age range (n = 6) and being native German speakers (n = 1). The final sample consisted of 102 participants (63 females, 35 males, 1 non-binary, 3 undisclosed; mean age: 25.2, SD: 4.56 range: 19–35). Recruitment took place through the email circular of the University of Tübingen and Prolific (www.prolific.com). Participants recruited via the university email system (81.7%) were given the opportunity to win a gift card in a lottery, whilst Prolific participants (18.3%) received monetary compensation. Recruitment, payment, and procedure followed the standard LingTüLab's ethical consent practices, approved by the DFG (German Research Foundation).
Materials and Design
Sixty German role nouns were chosen as experimental primes. The noun primes were used in singular form, and for each noun, all three gender forms were applied: masculine (e.g., Choreograf, ‘choreographermasc’), feminine (Choreografin, ‘choreographerfem’), and the star form (Choreograf*in, ‘choreographerinclusive’). The noun primes were on average 8.9 characters long in their masculine form (ranging between 5–15 characters).
In order to minimize an influence of gender stereotypes, the selected stimuli comprised nouns which are stereotypically neutral. The stereotypical neutrality was pre-tested in a rating task, in which 12 native speakers of German rated originally 82 role nouns on a 7-point scale assessing the likelihood of the noun being associated with a man or a woman. A rating of 1 indicated mostly men, 7 indicated mostly women, and 4 represented equally likely to be men or women. The 82 nouns comprised nouns that were taken from previous studies on role noun processing in German (e.g., Esaulova et al., 2014; Irmen & Schumann, 2011; Misersky et al., 2014), as well as from dictionary trawls. From the 82 role nouns that were evaluated, we selected the 60 nouns that received the most neutral ratings (range: 3.8–4.5, M = 4.05, SD = 0.17). Participants of the rating study did not take part in the main priming experiment.
Each of the 60 experimental noun primes, in its singular form with no preceding determiner, was paired with two singular third person pronouns (sie, ‘she’, and er, ‘he’) that functioned as targets in the experiment. The prime-target pairs could be grammatically congruent (e.g., Choreograf - er, ‘choreographermasc - he’; Choreografin - sie, choreographerfem - she’) or incongruent (e.g., Choreograf - sie, ‘choreographermasc - she’; Choreografin - er, ‘choreographerfem - he’). All prime-target pairs involving the star form were deemed congruent, as the gender star form is meant to equally represent women, men, and non-binary individuals (e.g., Choreograf*in - er, Choreograf*in - sie, ‘choreographerinclusive - he’, ‘choreographerinclusive - she’). Examples of experimental stimuli across conditions can be seen in Table 1. In addition, 52 nouns denoting common objects were chosen as filler primes. Sixteen of them were grammatically feminine (e.g., Aktentasche, ‘briefcase’), 16 were grammatically masculine (e.g., Teppich, ‘carpet’), and 20 were grammatically neuter (Glöckchen, ‘bell’). The filler prime nouns were paired with the singular third person pronouns sie or er, with 16 of the pairs being grammatically congruent (e.g., Aktentasche – sie, ‘briefcasefem – she’) and 36 being grammatically incongruent (e.g., Bleistift – sie, ‘pencilmasc – she’).
Example of Experimental Stimuli.
The experiment followed a 3 × 2 within-participant factorial design with gender form of the prime (masculine, feminine, star) and gender of target pronoun (feminine, masculine) as factors, and based on the complete set of stimuli, six lists were constructed, to which participants were randomly assigned. Each list contained all 112 prime-target pairs (60 experimental pairs and 52 filler pairs) in pseudo-random order with conditions being evenly distributed across lists. Specifically, each noun prime appeared in all three linguistic forms and was paired with both target pronouns across the six lists. However, within each individual list, each noun prime was presented only once in one of the linguistic forms and paired with one of the target pronouns. Thus, each list contained 20 experimental masculine forms, 20 feminine forms, and 20 star forms.
Procedure
The experiment was built using Gorilla Experiment Builder (www.gorilla.sc) and designed and run as an online, self-administered experiment (Anwyl-Irvine et al., 2020). Instructions in German appeared on the screen before the experiment started. The instructions told participants that they would see a noun on the computer screen directly followed by the appearance of the pronoun sie, ‘she’, or er, ‘he’. Their task was to read the noun carefully and then to decide the gender of the pronoun quickly and accurately. Participants were instructed to press the ‘J’ button on the keyboard if the gender of the target pronoun was masculine, and the ‘F’ button if the pronoun was feminine. The assignment of the J/F buttons was consistent across participants. To familiarize participants with the task, six practice trials using congruent and incongruent prime-target pairs of grammatically feminine, masculine, and neuter nouns were presented first. None of the practice nouns appeared in the actual experiment. In each trial of the priming experiment, a fixation point (i.e., a printed ‘+’) appeared centered on the screen for 500 ms. Then the prime noun, in lowercase black font with font size 70, was displayed in the center of the screen for 600 ms, followed by a blank screen for 300 ms. After that, the target pronoun, also in lowercase black font with font size 70, appeared centered on the screen and remained there until participants provided a response. A time limit of 4000 ms was set; if no response was provided by that time, the next prime noun appeared. Response times for key presses were measured from the onset of the presentation of the target pronoun. After half of the prime-target pairs of a list, participants could take a short break. Both experimental halves contained an equal number of masculine and feminine pronouns.
After the priming task was completed, participants had to fill out information about their age, gender, and language background via a short questionnaire, and they were also asked to rate their familiarity with the gender star form, their use of the gender star in both written and spoken language, as well as their opinion about this form.
Results
R (R Core Team, 2024) was used to conduct the statistical analysis of the response times (RTs) with the package lme4 (Bates et al., 2015). A linear mixed-effects model (lmer) was used, with RTs as the dependent variable. The gender form of the prime (star, feminine, and masculine) and the gender of the target pronoun (masculine and feminine) were used as fixed effects. We also included participants’ scaled familiarity with the star form, opinion about it, and usage in written and spoken language (familiarity, opinion, written use, spoken use) as fixed effects. Intercepts for participants and items were included as random effects. All categorical predictors were coded using treatment coding, with the star form and masculine target pronoun as the baseline condition. One participant was excluded due to many response errors (exceeding our predetermined threshold of 15 incorrect responses), failing even to provide a single correct answer in three experimental conditions. The final sample comprised 101 participants (62 females, 35 males, 1 non-binary, 3 undisclosed; mean age: 25.2, SD: 4.6). The analysis was performed on RTs for correct answers, after removing a total of 3.15% of the trials in which participants gave an incorrect answer (i.e., misidentified the gender of the target pronoun). Response times were assessed relative to the beginning of the presentation of the target. Responses with RTs longer than 1800 ms and shorter than 200 ms were removed from the analyses, resulting in a further exclusion of 0.43% of the data. These specific values were determined after a careful examination of the RT histograms, indicating them as reasonable thresholds. For the analyses, inverse rather than raw RTs were used (see Baayen & Milin, 2010; Ratcliff, 1993), as this transformation created the most normal distribution based on the Box-Cox transformation test and visual confirmation of the data (Venables & Ripley, 2002). 3 Mean raw and inverse RTs for the six conditions of the experiment can be found in Table 2. The graph in Figure 1 represents untransformed RTs for readability purposes. The output of the LMER model is summarized in Table 3. Standardized coefficients (β) and 95% confidence intervals for each predictor are reported in Supplemental Materials.
Mean Raw RTs in Decision of Gender of the Target Pronoun (sie, ‘she’ vs. er, ‘he’) When it was Preceded by the Gender Star (Choreograf*in), a Feminine (Choreografin), or Masculine (Choreograf) Noun Prime.
Mean Raw RTs and Mean Inverse RTs (in ms) with Standard Deviations in Parentheses.
LMER Result Summary.
p-values: *** < .001; ** < .01; * < .05.
The intercept of the model, which corresponds to the combination of the star prime and the masculine target pronoun (Choreograf*in - er, ‘choreographerinclusive - he’), served as the baseline level for the analysis and was significantly different from zero (b = −1.977, t = −11.572, p < .001). Overall, the slowest RTs were observed for incongruent pairs involving the feminine pronoun. The model revealed a significant interaction between feminine pronouns and masculine primes (Choreograf - sie), indicating that responses to feminine targets preceded by a masculine prime were significantly different from the baseline condition (b = 0.09976, t = 3.840, p < .001). Moving to the star form, there was no significant difference in RTs between the masculine (Choreograf*in – er; 486.65 ms) and feminine (Choreograf*in – sie; 487.26 ms) pronouns (b = −0.00732, t = −0.399, p = .69). Examining RTs across conditions, masculine prime - masculine pronoun pairs (Choreograf - er) were the fastest to be correctly identified, with a significant difference from the baseline condition, as shown by the effect of the masculine prime gender (b = −0.0782, t = −4.232, p < .001). Looking at pairs with the feminine primes, RTs for both pronouns were slightly different (477.67 ms for the feminine pronoun and 477.95 ms for the masculine one). The model revealed that feminine prime - masculine target pairs (Choreografin - er) were identified significantly faster than the reference level, as indicated by the significant effect of the feminine prime (b = −0.05133, t = −2.785, p = .006).
Furthermore, RTs in pairs involving the star form were influenced only partially by participants’ attitudes towards this form. Despite the moderate self-reported opinion about this form (M = 4.18, SD = 2.12), participants who rated the gender star more positively identified target pronouns significantly faster (b = −0.05693, t = −2.362, p = .02). Self-reported familiarity with the gender star, albeit quite high (M = 5.88, SD = 1.09), did not affect processing. Similarly, frequency of usage in written (M = 3.27, SD = 2.1) and spoken (M = 2.85, SD = 1.96) contexts showed no significant influence on RTs.
Next, to assess whether the star form affects the processing of masculine and feminine pronouns differently, a priori planned pairwise comparisons were carried out to examine differences between prime-target combinations using the emmeans-function of the emmens-package (Lenth, 2024). Estimated marginal means were calculated for each prime and target combination, and pairwise contrasts were performed separately within each level of the prime to compare RTs to masculine and feminine target pronouns using the simple = “each” argument of the pairs() function. For prime-target pairs involving the masculine form (Choreograf), RTs for the masculine pronoun were significantly faster than for the feminine pronoun (b = −0.092440, z.ratio = −5.027, p < .001). For pairs with feminine forms (Choreografin), RTs for the congruent feminine pronoun were descripitely slightly faster compared to RTs for the incongruent masculine pronoun, however, the difference was not significant (b = −0.000693, z.ratio = −0.038, p = .97). Looking at pairs with the star form (Choreograf*in), the contrast between masculine and feminine target pronouns was not significant either (b = 0.007315, z.ratio = 0.399, p = .69).
Discussion
Our response time analysis revealed that gender decision latencies for both target pronouns following the star form did not differ and were, in fact, quite similar. It appears that accessing the pronoun gender was neither strongly facilitated nor inhibited, which might serve as evidence that, in written language, the star form can be associated with both female and male referents without additional cognitive load for the latter. Looking at the other experimental conditions, gender decision latencies in the grammatically incongruent pairs (Choreograf – sie, Choreografin – er) were longer than the grammatically congruent ones (Choreograf – er, Choreografin – sie), however, the difference was significant only for masculine prime forms (Choreograf – er vs. Choreograf – sie), in line with previous findings of a male bias associated with masculine gender (Gygax et al., 2021; Körner et al., 2022; Rothermund & Strack, 2024). The absence of such an effect for the feminine prime forms contradicts previous research reporting a processing cost in case of agreement violation for both feminine and masculine grammatical gender (Barber & Carreiras, 2005; Caffarra & Barber, 2015 for Spanish; Caffarra et al., 2014, 2015 for Italian; Misersky et al., 2019; Saldaña et al., 2025; Seyboth & Domahs, 2023 for German). One possible explanation for the current lack of an effect might be that although our noun primes were preselected to be stereotypically neutral, it is possible that gender associations with feminine noun forms simply exert a weaker influence on online processing compared to the influence of the predominant masculine forms. Alternatively, the presence and visual similarity of the feminine and star forms in the experiment may have attenuated the congruency effect for the feminine forms, promoting a more gender-neutral interpretation of the feminine form.
In any case, the absence of a congruency effect for feminine prime forms makes it difficult to determine whether the results for the star form genuinely indicate an association with both female and male referents. Therefore, Experiment 2, where the same prime stimuli are presented again, this time in auditory form, aimed to clarify this issue. Experiment 2 investigates spoken gender star processing using auditory prime presentation and different-gender voices, allowing to test whether the glottal stop achieves inclusive processing and provides converging evidence across modalities.
Experiment 2
Method
Participants
Participants were recruited and rewarded in the same way as in Experiment 1 (43.1% from university email circular and 56.9% from Prolific). One hundred eighty-eight native speakers of German, living in Germany, (100 females, 81 males, 7 non-binary; mean age: 26.14, SD: 4.46, range: 18–46) participated in this experiment. Seven participants were excluded from the analyses on the grounds that they did not meet the following study criteria: 18–35 age range (n = 1) and being native German speakers (n = 6). Additionally, one participant did not answer all the questions in the demographic questionnaire (n = 1) and was excluded. The final sample consisted of 180 participants (94 females, 79 males, 7 non-binary; mean age: 26.1, SD: 4.25, range: 18–35).
Materials and Design
The same materials as in Experiment 1 were used, with the only difference being that role noun primes were now played auditorily to participants rather than presented in written form. The linguistic gender forms of the experimental nouns were again masculine (/ko:ʁe:o:gʁa:f/, Choreograf, ‘choreographermasc’), feminine (/ko:ʁe:o:gʁa:fɪn/, Choreografin, ‘choreographerfem’) and inclusive, now with a glottal stop rather than an asterisk (/ko:ʁe:o:gʁa:fʔɪn/, Choreograf*in, ‘choreographerinclusive’). The prime nouns were first recorded by a phonetically trained, female native speaker of German (age: 32). Care was taken during the recordings, that the speaker consistently produced a noticeable and natural sounding glottal stop for the inclusive noun forms. To ensure that there were as few differences as possible in pronunciation and speaking rate between the recordings of the conventionally feminine- and masculine- sounding voices, we decided to transform the original recordings in PRAAT into a masculine-sounding voice, rather than recording an additional male speaker (Boersma & Weenink, 2025). The script modified pitch and formants, lowering the pitch mean to 100 Hz and the formant shift ratio to 0.75. The average mean pitch of the original feminine-sounding voice was 191.6 Hz, and the mean pitch of the masculine-sounding voice was 103.01 Hz. To further ensure that the two voices were perceived indeed as conventionally feminine- or masculine- sounding, six participants completed a pre-test, in which they listened to a sample of the experimental stimuli and indicated whether the voice sounded as feminine or masculine. All participants correctly identified the gender of the voice. The average duration of the noun form with the glottal stop was 1199.65 ms, 969.77 ms for the feminine noun forms, and 828.71 ms for the masculine noun forms. The experiment used a 3 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial design with gender form of the prime (glottal stop, feminine, masculine) and gender of target pronoun (masculine, feminine) as within-participant factors, and gender typicality of voice (conventionally feminine- and masculine- sounding voices) as a between-participant factor. Six lists were constructed, each comprising 112 prime target-pairs (60 experimental pairs and 52 filler pairs), as in Experiment 1.
Procedure
The same procedure as in Experiment 1 was followed with a few modifications. First, to ensure that participants in the experiment were wearing headphones, a headphone-screening task was incorporated prior to the actual experiment. Participants heard three intervals of randomly ordered white noise with equal frequency and duration, one of which contained a Huggins Pitch tone (Milne et al., 2021). They were asked to identify which of the three intervals contained the hidden pitch. The test comprised six trials, and participants needed five correct responses to pass the headphone test and proceed to the main experiment. All experimental materials were loaded prior to the start of the experimental session to prevent loading delays. Participants were instructed that they would hear a noun, followed by the pronoun sie, ‘she’, or er, ‘he’, and their task was to decide the gender of the pronoun as quickly and accurately as possible. After the priming task, participants were asked to indicate whether the voice they heard sounded as feminine or masculine.
Results
Eight participants exceeded the predetermined error criterion (up to 15 incorrect responses) and had no single correct response in at least one of the conditions (two of them had been assigned to the feminine-sounding voice condition and the remaining six to the masculine-sounding one). These participants were excluded from the analysis, removing approximately 4.28% of the data (about 1.11% of the excluded trials were from the feminine-sounding voice condition and about 3.16% in the masculine-sounding voice condition). This left a total of 172 participants who were included in the statistical analysis (6 non-binary, 91 females, 75 males; mean age: 26.1, SD: 4.2, range: 18–35). R (R Core Team, 2024) was used again to conduct the statistical analysis of the response times (RTs) with the package lme4 (Bates et al., 2015). A linear mixed-effects model (lmer) was used, with RTs as the dependent variable. The gender form of the prime (glottal stop, feminine, masculine), the gender of the target pronoun (masculine and feminine), and gender typicality of voice (feminine-sounding and masculine-sounding) were used as fixed effects. Participants’ scaled familiarity with the gender star, opinion about it, and usage in written and spoken language (familiarity, opinion, written use, spoken use) were also included as fixed effects. Intercepts for participants and items were included as random effects. All categorical predictors were coded using treatment coding, with the glottal stop form, masculine target pronoun, and the feminine-sounding voice as the baseline condition. We also removed incorrect answers (misidentifying the gender of the target pronoun), excluding 4.28% of the trials (2.43% of these trials were in the feminine-sounding voice condition and 1.85% trials in the masculine-voice condition). Response times were assessed relative to the beginning of the presentation of the target. Response times faster than 200 ms and slower than 2 SDs of the sample mean were excluded (3.41% of the trials, of which 2.4% occurred in the feminine-sounding voice condition and 1.01% in the masculine-sounding voice one). Inverse response times were used as in Experiment 1. Mean raw and inverse RTs for the six conditions of the experiment can be found in Table 4. The graph in Figure 2 represents untransformed RTs for readability purposes. The output of the LMER model is summarized in Table 5. Standardized coefficients (β) and 95% confidence intervals for each predictor are reported in Supplemental Materials.
Mean Raw RTs in Decision of Gender of the Target Pronoun (sie, ‘she’ vs. er, ‘he’) When it was Preceded by the Glottal Stop Form (Choreografʔin), a Feminine (Choreografin) or Masculine (Choreograf) Noun Prime, Averaged Across Both Voice Conditions.
Mean Raw RTs and Mean Inverse RTs (in ms) with Standard Deviations in Parentheses.
LMER Result Summary.
p-values: *** < .001; ** < .01; * < .05.
The intercept of the model, with glottal stop prime and masculine pronoun pairs (Choreografʔin - er, ‘choreographerinclusive - he’), produced by a female speaker, constituted the baseline level and was significantly different from zero (b = −2.212, t = −22.00, p < .001). Overall, response times for the incongruent condition with the feminine pronoun (Choreograf – sie) were the slowest, which is reflected by the interaction between the gender form of the prime (masculine) and the gender of the pronoun (feminine) (b = 0.1262, t = 4.787, p < .001). This indicates that this condition was significantly slower than the reference level. On the contrary, pairs comprising feminine primes and masculine targets, which was the second incongruent condition, were not significantly different from the baseline, since the feminine prime effect was not significant (b = −0.01339, t = −0.684, p = .494). Response times for the glottal stop followed by a masculine pronoun (baseline) were the second slowest condition and differed significantly from the congruent masculine prime - masculine pronoun condition (Choreograf– er), as illustrated by the effect of the masculine prime (b = −0.04480, t = −2.289, p = .022). However, they were descriptively similar to response times for pairs involving the glottal stop and the feminine pronoun (Choreografʔin - sie), and the difference between these two conditions (Choreografʔin - er, Choreografʔin - sie) was not significant, as shown by the lack of a feminine pronoun effect (b = −0.03127, t = −1.682, p = .093).
Finally, gender typicality of voice and its interactions with the other factors were examined. Overall, response times were longer in the feminine-sounding voice condition compared to the masculine-sounding voice condition (448.19 ms vs. 438.56 ms, t = 5.0274, p < .001). However, it should be noted that the analyzed number of trials for each voice condition was not completely balanced (5388 trials and 98 participants in the feminine-sounding voice condition, and 4149 trials and 74 participants in the masculine-sounding voice condition), which may have impacted the results. Looking at the model output, gender typicality of voice was not a significant predictor of response times for the target pronoun (b = −0.05802, t = −1.284, p = .2), nor were its interactions with prime gender and target gender. In order to verify this, we re-ran the model with the conventionally masculine-sounding voice as the reference level, and the previously reported effects of voice gender typicality and its interactions were replicated.
Finally, language attitudes predictors did not significantly affect RTs. Even though participants were familiar with the star form (M = 5.74, SD = 1.21) and neutral about its usefulness (M = 4.1, SD = 2.11), these factors did not influence processing speed. Likewise, the low self-reported usage in written (M = 3.27, SD = 2.07) and spoken (M = 2.79, SD = 1.87) language showed no significant effects.
Next, a priori planned pairwise comparisons were conducted to investigate differences between prime-target conditions separately using the emmeans package (Lenth, 2024), focusing on the glottal stop form. Estimated marginal means were computed for all combinations of prime form and target pronoun gender to test for differences between masculine and feminine pronoun targets within each prime level using the simple = “each” argument of the pairs() function. First, we examined pairs involving masculine prime forms (Choreograf). The contrast between the masculine and the feminine pronoun was significant, with significantly faster responses for the congruent masculine pronoun (b = −0.0929, z.ratio = −6.631, p < .001). Similarly, the contrast between masculine and feminine pronouns following feminine primes (Choreografin) was also significant, with slower responses for the masculine target pronoun (b = 0.0481, z.ratio = −3.443, p < .001). Response times for the target pronouns in pairs involving the glottal stop form (Choreografʔin) did not significantly differ (b = 0.0192, z.ratio = 1.372, p = .17).
Discussion
Examining response times, in Experiment 2 we found that gender decision latencies for pairs including glottal stop forms were quite similar for both pronouns, as in Experiment 1, indicating that the glottal stop can be associated with female and male referents, requiring no more cognitive effort for the latter. Moreover, unlike Experiment 1, both masculine and feminine prime forms showed congruency effects, with faster responses to grammatically congruent pronouns. This symmetrical processing suggests that, in spoken language, both feminine and masculine forms effectively activate mental representations of female and male referents respectively. Moreover, it confirms that the gender-inclusive form under study can elicit inclusive representations rather than reflecting processing limitations with the feminine form.
Additionally, the absence of voice gender typicality effects, despite previous findings of speaker gender - grammatical gender congruency (e.g., Alekseeva et al., 2022; Andonova, 2013; Casado et al., 2018; Hanulíková & Carreiras, 2015), could be due to the addition of the inclusive form in the experimental design. In previous studies, participants were consistently exposed to the binary feminine - masculine grammatical gender distinction, which might have accentuated the congruency or incongruency between the speakers’ sex/gender and the grammatical gender of the word they produced. Our participants heard an equal number of feminine, masculine, and inclusive forms, which might have led to a more flexible gender processing, without the strict binary categorization. To put it differently, since they were exposed to forms that were not solely binary, the binary distinction of voice gender was possibly not as helpful and relevant.
General Discussion
The present research was designed to determine whether the star form leads to gender-inclusive or female-biased processing in German, in written and spoken language. Overall, examining the response time graphs across both experiments reveals a quite consistent pattern. Focusing on the star/glottal stop forms (Choreograf*in, Choreografʔin), no effect of pronoun gender was found, indicating that response latencies for both pronouns following these forms did not differ. These findings suggest that no additional cognitive effort was required for either pronoun, illustrating that this form can be associated with women and men, which refutes our hypothesis for a female bias elicited by the star/glottal stop forms. Despite the morphological and phonological similarity between the gender-inclusive form and feminine nouns, it seems that the star/glottal stop forms activate balanced representations of women and men in both written and spoken modalities. This inclusive processing pattern distinguishes the star form from gender-inclusive binary approaches, such as the German capital I form (ChoreografInnen) and the French mid-dot form (voisin·es), which closely resemble feminine nouns and can primarily activate female-biased representations (Braun et al., 2005; Tibblin, Granfeldt, et al., 2023). In contrast, the star's orthographic and phonological distinctiveness (as a glottal stop), as well as its non-binary intended usage, seems to signal diversity more strongly (Schunack & Binanzer, 2022). Our findings align with Zacharski and Ferstl (2023), who found that the star form can equally elicit female, male, and non-binary representations of gender. However, Körner et al. (2022, 2024) report a different pattern, with a female bias associated with the star form and the glottal stop, though this bias was not reflected in response times. This discrepancy might be attributed to different processing mechanisms involved in the task: while explicit judgments about sentence continuations involve more strategic processing, response times reflect more automatic processing.
One finding that is clear from the first experiment is the gender star was not processed as a feminine form. This is reflected by the processing of the masculine pronoun, where RTs were slower following the gender star than following feminine forms, and also in the processing of the feminine pronoun, where feminine forms (Choreografin) led to significantly faster RTs than the star form (Choreograf*in). In the second experiment, when paired with a feminine pronoun, the contrast between the feminine and the glottal stop form was not significant, although it showed a numerical trend (p = .059). This pattern may suggest modality differences, with the gender-inclusive form appearing less pronounced in listening, however, given the marginal significance, this interpretation should be viewed with caution. Moreover, this finding aligns with Zacharski and Ferstl (2023), who found that yes-responses for images of women following star forms and feminine forms were not significantly different, however, their study still provides evidence of an inclusive reading of the gender star.
Further cross-modal differences also emerged in pronoun processing patterns. In Experiment 1, feminine pronouns following the star form (Choreograf*in -sie) were processed similarly to those following masculine prime forms (Choreograf -sie), with no significant difference in response times. This pattern illustrates that the written star form was processed as non-feminine, creating a more inclusive interpretation. In contrast, in Experiment 2, the difference between masculine and glottal stop prime forms paired with feminine pronouns was significant, showing a facilitating effect for the glottal stop. Processing masculine pronouns revealed a complementary pattern. In Experiment 1, masculine pronouns were processed significantly faster following feminine forms (Choreografin – er) than after star forms (Choreograf*in – er), suggesting different processing mechanisms for these forms. However, in Experiment 2, the difference between feminine and glottal stop prime forms was not significant, indicating more similar processing patterns between these forms. Taken together, these results indicate that task modality influenced how strongly the gender-inclusive form activated gendered representations. Participants in the first experiment had visual access to the highly distinctive asterisk, which activated more inclusive gender inferences. On the other hand, the auditory glottal stop may be less marked owing to the phonological similarity with feminine forms. This has important implications for language policy, as it might show that gender-inclusive forms are more effective in creating balanced representations in written contexts. However, the high overall accuracy in pairs involving the glottal stop and both pronouns further suggests that this form was perceived as distinct. Moreover, before drawing conclusions about the efficiency of the glottal stop, it should be considered that our task employed isolated words, with no context that could help listeners identify what they hear if they are unsure. In real life, the context, either linguistic (e.g., syntactic agreement) or social (e.g., speaker identity, setting), would help listeners disambiguate gender-inclusive forms more efficiently.
Moving to the grammatically feminine and masculine forms, our hypothesis was partially confirmed. Overall, gender decision latencies in the grammatically congruent conditions (Choreograf – er, Choreografin – sie) were faster than the respective grammatically incongruent ones (Choreografin – er, Choreograf – sie). However, in Experiment 1, an effect of congruency was observed only for masculine primes. This pattern contradicts previous findings of symmetrical congruency effects for both gender forms in German, Italian and Spanish (Barber & Carreiras, 2005; Caffarra et al., 2014; Misersky et al., 2019; Saldaña et al., 2025; Seyboth & Domahs, 2023), with feminine violations typically leading to earlier and more easily detectable effects (e.g., see Alemán Bañón & Rothman, 2016; Beatty-Martínez et al., 2021 for Spanish; Esaulova et al., 2014; Irmen & Schumann, 2011 for German). In Experiment 2, though, congruency effects for both pronouns were found. This could suggest that in spoken language, both feminine and masculine forms immediately elicit mental representations of women and men respectively. Given that auditory information is ephemeral and cannot be revisited, listeners may integrate it immediately into mental representations, resulting in a bigger processing cost in case of incongruence (Gabriel et al., 2017). This immediate integration might be another explanation of why glottal stop processing aligns more closely with feminine forms. Since the glottal stop is phonologically similar to feminine forms (both ending in /-in/), the temporary auditory information may lead listeners to quickly categorize it as feminine.
Additionally, the question of how voice gender typicality interacts with processing was explored. Previous research has found congruency effects when the gender of the speaker matches the grammatical gender of the word uttered, leading to faster response times in word repetition tasks (Andonova, 2013), lexical decision tasks (Casado et al., 2018), and gender decision tasks (Andonova, 2013; Casado et al., 2018; Vitevitch et al., 2013). On the other hand, incongruence between the gender of the speaker and the grammatical gender of the stimuli has been found to result in early and late ERP effects (Alekseeva et al., 2022; Hanulíková & Carreiras, 2015). Based on these findings, we expected to observe voice gender effects, with the feminine-sounding voice accentuating the potential female bias of the glottal stop. Our hypothesis, though, was not confirmed, since voice gender typicality did not influence gender decision latencies. This null effect contradicts previous studies and could be attributed to the inclusion of a gender-inclusive form in our experiment. Previous studies employed exclusively feminine and masculine stimuli produced by a speaker whose gender might have mismatched the stimuli gender, accentuating the incongruence between them (Alekseeva et al., 2022; Andonova, 2013; Casado et al., 2018; Vitevitch et al., 2013). Adding a gender-inclusive form might have attenuated voice gender typicality effects, as participants were exposed to binary and non-binary linguistic forms, rendering gender typicality of voice neither relevant nor reliable for the gender decision task. Post-hoc analysis examining participants gender effects found no significant effects or interactions with gender typicality of voice. The absence of voice gender effect has two implications. First, it provides more evidence that the glottal stop is not female-biased or processed as feminine; if it were, response times for the feminine pronoun following glottal stop prime forms would be faster than for the masculine pronoun in the feminine-sounding voice condition. Second, gender-inclusive language may create communicative contexts in which voice cues exert less influence on gender inferences. This is particularly beneficial for combating gender stereotypes, as speaker gender has been found to interact with gender stereotypes in language processing (e.g., Lattner & Friederici, 2003; Van Berkum et al., 2008). Furthermore, the absent voice gender effect shows that the female bias associated with the glottal stop reported by Körner et al. (2024) was probably not attributed to the female speaker. Instead, this bias could be due to the nature of the task, for example, the lack of time pressure that might reflect a less automatic processing, or the between-subjects design, which made the distinction between glottal stop forms and feminine forms less salient.
Finally, an effect of opinion about gender star's usefulness significantly affected gender decision latencies. Participants who rated the gender star as more useful were faster in correctly identifying both pronouns following the star form in Experiment 1. This suggests that those who advocate for the gender star could more easily process this form as well as associate it with both female and male referents compared to those who deem it unnecessary. It appears therefore that mental representations of sex/gender elicited by gender-inclusive forms are not fixed but dynamically influenced by individual attitudes. Körner et al. (2024) also found that opponents of the glottal stop form exhibited a larger female bias, further highlighting the significant role of language attitudes in processing. Our findings have important theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, they show that processing gender-inclusive language is not strictly linguistically driven, but it is influenced by individual attitudes. Practically, this means that when people acknowledge the usefulness of gender-inclusive forms, they can process them efficiently and perceive them as inclusive, which is the main goal these forms were designed to achieve.
However, the scope of this study was limited to a binary gender framework, testing whether the star/glottal stop forms can equally represent women and men. The star form, though, aims to represent individuals beyond the female-male dichotomy, which could not be assessed with our methodology. Future studies can examine whether the star form succeeds in representing binary and non-binary genders equally by employing paradigms that treat gender as non-binary, for instance, using visual stimuli (e.g., Zacharski & Ferstl, 2023 in German) or auditory stimuli with ambiguous or gender-neutral voices (see Hegarty & Fasoli, 2024 in English; Mooshammer & Etzrodt, 2022 in German). Only by moving beyond binary representations can we evaluate the cognitive and social impact of gender-inclusive language.
Conclusion
The present study was designed to examine the processing of the star form and the glottal stop, its spoken realization, in written and spoken German. Our findings provide evidence that the gender star and the glottal stop can be associated with both women and men, with equal cognitive ease, eliciting balanced gender representations across modalities. Voice gender cues did not directly influence glottal stop processing.
These findings are encouraging about the use of the star form in reducing gender discrimination, as they show that it can activate mental representations of both women and men, without processing asymmetries. Therefore, it would be advisable for public institutions and the media that wish to contribute to the reduction of gender discrimination to officially adopt this form. The current lack of consistency in the use of gender-inclusive language might confuse German speakers and even reinforce a preference for conventional binary forms. Establishing and consistently using one gender-inclusive form is likely to increase acceptance and help eliminate the linguistic exclusion of certain groups.
Supplemental Material
sj-docx-1-jls-10.1177_0261927X251393827 - Supplemental material for Processing the Gender Star Form in German: A Comparison of Written and Spoken Modalities
Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-jls-10.1177_0261927X251393827 for Processing the Gender Star Form in German: A Comparison of Written and Spoken Modalities by Despoina Chalyvidou and Andrea Weber in Journal of Language and Social Psychology
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
AI-based language tools were occasionally used for minor editing support. The ideas and conclusions presented are fully original.
Ethical Approval and Informed Consent Statements
Research has been approved by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGFS). Written informed consent has been obtained from all respondents prior to their participation in the study.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This study was funded by the Chair of Psycholinguistics and Applied Language Studies at the University of Tübingen.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
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References
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