Why do boys prefer cars and girls prefer dolls? The role of specific attributes of toys in sextypical toy preferences.

女孩喜欢玩偶之类的玩具，而男孩喜欢汽车和建筑玩具。这些儿童玩具兴趣的性别差异已经在发展文献中得到了广泛的记录（例如Connor & Serbin， 1977），并且已经在12个月大的婴儿中观察到。Jadva et al., 2010)。许多人认为这是与性别社会化相关的认知机制和学习的结果（例如，caldera et al., 1989; Carter & Levy, 1988）。然而，对非人类灵长类动物（如Alexander & Hines， 2002）以及内分泌失调住院患者（如Pasterski等，2005）玩具偏好的研究表明，两性二态玩具偏好实际上可能反映了两性之间基本的神经生物学差异。根据这一研究路线，有人提出，性别典型玩具的选择可能是由男女之间的基本感知/行动差异造成的，例如男孩偏爱推进运动，女孩偏爱面部机械刺激（例如Williams & Pleil， 2008）。在我的博士学位中，我想测试这一理论，通过检查操纵与这些基本感知/行动偏好相关的玩具属性（例如，使用没有或有静态车轮的汽车；面部特征减少的玩偶）是否会影响儿童的性别典型兴趣。我还想测试婴儿对更广泛的运动模式的偏好，这些运动模式表征着游戏对象（例如摇晃、弹跳、旋转）。

Girls favour toys such as dolls, whereas boys favour vehicles and construction toys. These sex differences in children's toy interests have beenextensively documented in developmental literature (e.g. Connor & Serbin, 1977) and have been observed in infants as young as 12 months of age(e.g. Jadva et al., 2010). These are considered by many to result from cognitive mechanisms and learning associated with gender socialisation (e.g.Caldera et al., 1989; Carter & Levy, 1988). However, studies on toy-preferences in non-human primates (e.g. Alexander & Hines, 2002) as well as inpatients with endocrine disorders (e.g. Pasterski et al., 2005) suggest that sex dimorphic toy preferences may actually reflect basic neurobiologicaldifferences between sexes. Following this line of research, it has been proposed that sex-typical toy choices are likely to result from basicperception/action differences between males and females such as boys' preference for propulsive motion and girls' preference for faces overmechanical stimuli (e.g. Williams & Pleil, 2008). In my PhD I would like to test this theory, by checking whether manipulating the attributes of toys linkedto these basic perceptual/action preferences (e.g. using cars without or with static wheels; dolls with reduced facial features) affects sex-typicalinterests of children. I would also like to test infants' preferences for a wider scope of motion patterns characterising objects of play (e.g. rocking,bouncing, spinning).