Both sexes 'prone to rabbiting'

Women are not chatterboxes, scientists have found, putting pay to the age old myth that the fairer sex is prone to rabbiting on.

A study carried out over six years by US researchers found there is no significant difference in the number of words spoken by each sex on a daily basis.

Matthias Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona said he and his colleagues had set out to challenge the urban myth.

They recorded the conversations of nearly 400 US and Mexican male and female university students using a specially-developed electronically-activated recorder.

It found women spoke a daily average of 16,215 words compared to an average 15,699 words for men. The most talkative man used 47,000 words in a day while the least chose his words carefully and only said 500.

Professor Mehl concluded that the study showed no support for the idea that women have a larger "lexical budget" than men.

The Are Women Really More Talkative Than Men study published in Science magazine states: "The widespread and highly publicised stereotype about female talkativeness and male reticence is unfounded."

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