Source : Perth Now news
Baby girls are more interested in people than boys from their very first hours of life, while newborn boys appear more fascinated by objects, research suggests.
Scientists at the University of Cambridge studied 130 babies just hours after birth, before they had experienced the toys, expectations and social influences that can shape childhood.
Each newborn was shown two videos side by side.
One featured a human face, while the other showed a Newton’s cradle, a desk toy made from suspended metal balls that swing into one another.
Both sexes generally preferred the face, but girls spent more time watching it than boys.
Boys, meanwhile, devoted more attention to the moving metal balls.
The findings suggest some average differences in behaviour may have biological influences, rather than being entirely shaped by upbringing.
Yumnah Khan, who led the study at Cambridge’s Autism Research Centre, said: “Recent research has also shown that on-average sex differences are present in brain structure at birth and emerge prenatally.
“This new study tells us that there are not only on-average sex differences in the brain, but also in attention and behaviour.”
Professor Sir Simon Baron-Cohen, who oversaw the research, said the findings addressed whether biology helped shape differences between male and female minds.
He said the fact that differences were visible within hours of birth, before extensive experience outside the womb, suggested “prenatal factors play a role”.
Those factors could include “sex hormones and/or genes”, he said.
The expert added: “In other words, it’s nature and nurture, not nature or nurture.”
The findings may also help explain why girls have previously been found to develop some language and social skills faster than boys.
However, researchers stressed that the results describe differences between groups, not rules for individual children.
Dr Alex Tsompanidis, another member of the research team, said: “Sex differences at birth are important as starting points, but we need to remember that they don’t fully determine how children learn and develop in later life.”
Professor Carrie Allison, deputy director of the Autism Research Centre, added: “The differences we see don’t apply to all male or all female infants, and are only seen when you compare groups of male and female infants, on average. There’s a lot of variation within, and overlap between each sex.”
