Gender affects naming latencies for living and nonliving things: Implications for familiarity

Recent studies indicate the presence of a gender-by-category interaction in the naming abilities of both Alzheimer's patients and normal subjects (Lai acona, Barbarotto and Capitani, 1998; McKenna and Parry, 1994). In particul ar, males appear to be better than females at naming nonliving things and f emales better at naming living things. Similarly, in a recent study of sema ntic fluency, males retrieved more names of tools than females and females more names of fruit than males (Capitani, Laiacona and Barbarotto, 1999). S uch findings have important implications for our understanding of category- specific disorders. The current study examined the naming latencies of norm al subjects to pictures of living and nonliving things. We confirm a gender -by category interaction across both subject and item, with females being s lower than males to name nonliving things and males slower to name living t hings. This finding could not be explained by differential difficulty of it ems or differences in gender-based familiarity ratings.