Sex Differences in Speed of Reading

Abstract

It appears from Table II that only two (not four as formerly reported) of the ob tained differences are reliable statistically, and these favor the girls. The differences favoring the girls at the high school level in the tenth and eleventh grades are reliable. There are no statistically reliable differences appearing at the college level. The greatest difference in reading speed was found in the sophomore subjects and this difference favored the girls. The difference at the sopho more level is quite similar to that found by Berman and Bird1 in testing a group of 463 sophomores. When all the male subjects are compared with all the female subjects in the present study, the difference in reading speed favors the girls and is statistically reliable. Summary of Results.?Girls appear to be consistently more rapid readers than boys at each grade level from the eighth grade in junior high school through the sophomore year in college. This superiority is apparent, even though the sampling of girls was more positively skewed than was that of the boys. The difference between the means in the number of paragraphs read by the boys and by the girls was statistically reliable in only two (not four as previously stated) of the nine comparisons, but both instances favored the girls. When all the girls' scores are com bined into one distribution and compared with the combined scores of the boys, the mean score of the girls excels that of the boys and the difference is statistically reliable. Boys surpassed girls in the number of paragraphs read at the junior and senior years in college, but this difference was not great enough to be statistically reliable. 1 Isabelle Berman and Charles Bird, Sex Differences in Speed of Reading, Journal of Applied Psychology, XVII (1933), 221-26.