London: Children as young as nine months-old prefer to play with toys specific to their own gender - with boys choosing balls and girls favouring cooking pots - according to a new study which shows sex differences become evident at an earlier age than previously thought.
The research therefore suggests the possibility that boys and girls follow different developmental trajectories with respect to selection of gender-typed toys and that there is both a biological and a developmental-environmental components to the sex differences seen in object preferences.
To study the gender preferences seen with toys, the researchers from City University London and University College London observed the toy preferences of boys and girls engaged in independent play in UK nurseries, in absense of a parent.
The toys used in the study were a doll, a pink teddy bear and a cooking pot for girls, while for boys a car, a blue teddy, a digger and a ball were used.
The 101 boys and girls fell into three age groups: nine to 17 months, when infants can first demonstrate toy preferences in independent play; 18 to 23 months, when critical advances in gender knowledge occur; and 24 to 32 months, when knowledge becomes further established.
Stereotypical toy preferences were found for boys and girls in each of the age groups, demonstrating that sex differences in toy preference appear early in development.
Both boys and girls showed a trend for an increasing preference with age for toys stereotyped for boys.
"Sex differences in play and toy choice are of interest in relation to child care, educational practice and developmental theory," said Brenda Todd, from the City University said.
"Historically there has been uncertainty about the origins of boys' and girls' preferences for play with toys typed to their own sex and the developmental processes that underlie this behaviour," said Todd.
"As a result we set out to find out whether a preference occurs and at what age it develops," she said.
"Biological differences give boys an aptitude for mental rotation and more interest and ability in spatial processing, while girls are more interested in looking at faces and better at fine motor skills and manipulating objects," Todd said.
"When we studied toy preference in a familiar nursery setting with parents absent, the differences we saw were consistent with these aptitudes," she said.
"Although there was variability between individual children, we found that, in general, boys played withmale-typed toys more than female-typed toys and girls played with female-typed toys more than male-typed toys," she added.
"The ball was a favourite choice for the youngest boys and the youngest girls favoured the cooking pot," she said.
The study was published in the journal of Infant and Child Development.
