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Re:Brain connections may explain why girls mature faster by popularopinion on Wednesday January 01, 2014 @03:20PM (#6996404)
It's very interesting that you bring up toys as an example, because it turns out there is quite good evidence that gender toy preferences are partially genetic. Think about this: if toy preference is just a social construction, if we removed all social pressure regarding toy selection, would boys and girls still prefer different toys?

It turns out the answer is yes. In 2002, a (very influential) study was performed on vervet monkeys and found that male vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the masculine toys (i.e. a ball and a police car), and the female vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the feminine toys (a doll and a red pan). There wasn't much difference in preference for the neutral toys.

One study is not enough to show such a trend. So in 2008, the study was repeated a different species of monkey (rehesus) and a different set of toys. The authors found the same results: males preferred stereotypically male toys, and females preferred stereotypically female toys.

So we have two studies in two species of primates that found that males prefer "masculine" toys, and females prefer "feminine" toys. From this, it is fairly plausible that innate differences in toy preference will show up in humans as well.

Sources:

Vervet Study: http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(02)00107-1/fullt...

Rhesus Study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2583786/

Summary of both studies: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundament...

Re:Brain connections may explain why girls mature faster by smtddr on Wednesday January 01, 2014 @03:33PM (#6996471)
>>female vervet monkeys showed significantly greater interest in the feminine toys (a picture book and a stuffed dog).

I don't know what to say about using monkeys for this kind of study, but I will say that I never thought of stuffed dogs & picture books as feminine. Those sound like male/neutral to me!

Re:Brain connections may explain why girls mature faster by popularopinion on Wednesday January 01, 2014 @03:38PM (#6996487)
You are correct, I looked up the original study and found that the picture book and the furry dog were actually the neutral condition toys. The feminine toys were a doll and a red cooking pan. Thank you for pointing this out, I will edit my post.
Re:Brain connections may explain why girls mature faster by artsrc on Wednesday January 01, 2014 @06:54PM (#6997378)
Perhaps the male monkeys are brought up differently (I bet they are), and some part of the difference is the mothers rearing style (perhaps from culture or genetics).