Men DO talk just as much as women, says study

The idea that women have much more to say is a myth, scientists argue.

They have found both sexes speak an average of 16,000 words in a typical day.

In the first experiment of its kind, a portable 'speech analyser' was used to measure exactly who said what and when.

However, while the scientists believe the results destroy the stereotype of the chatterbox woman, others remain unconvinced. They say the study, which was carried out on university students, does not reflect the behaviour of older men and women.

For more than a decade, psychologists have claimed that women use far more words every day than men.

The belief was fuelled by the psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, whose book The Female Brain, reported: "A woman uses about 20,000 words per day, while a man uses about 7,000."

Dr James Pennebaker, who worked on the study at the University of Texas, said: "These findings have been reported widely by national media and have entered the cultural mainstream.

"Although many people believe the stereotypes of females as talkative and men as reticent, there is no large-scale study that systematically has recorded the natural conversations of large groups of people for extended periods of time."

His team used an electronically activated recorder, or EAR, worn on the body, which monitors conversation.

In the study, 400 university students aged between 17 and 29 wore the EAR for several days. It was programmed to record 30 seconds of sound every 12.5 minutes-Any conversations were then transcribed.

The researchers found that women spoke on average 16,215 words each day - while men spoke 15,669. Although women used more words, the difference was too small to matter.

Dr Matthias Mehl, who also worked on the study, believes the idea that women use nearly three times as many words as men should be regarded as 'an urban myth'.

The study does have some flaws, however. As well as the age bias, the volunteers, being university students, were better educated than average. It is possible that less well educated men are less talkative than comparable women.