THURSDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Infant boys exposed to to multuous levels of the male hormone testosterone preceding birth have double the risk with regard to language delay as females, according to a just discovered study.

"An estimated 12 percent of toddlers experience significant delays in their language disclosure," said study lead author Professor Andrew Whitehouse at the University of Western Australia. "While speech development varies between individuals, males take care of to develop later and at a slower defame than females."

The study appears Jan. 26 in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

The Australian researchers notorious that male fetuses have 10 periods the levels of testosterone than the fair sex, which could explain the greater verisimilitude of language delays.

The study used the umbilical small rope blood of 767 newborns to apportion how much testosterone the infants were exposed to for the time of a critical phase of brain progress to maturity. The children's language ability was therefore assessed by the time they were 1, 2 and 3 years fertile.

The researchers found that male infants by high testosterone levels were two to three ages more likely to have a tongue delay than females. In contrast, girls exposed to despotic testosterone levels had a lower hazard for the developmental problem.

"Language tarrying is one of the most trite reasons children are taken to a pediatrician," Whitehouse uttered in a journal news release. "Now these findings can help us to understand the biological mechanisms that may underpin language delay, as well as language expansion more generally."

While the study mould an association between testosterone levels and speech delays, it did not prove a source and effect.

More information

The Nemours Foundation has to a greater degree information on language delay.

@yahoonews on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook