Abstract
Three-year-old children were observed in two free-play sessions and participated in a toy-retrieval task, in which only one of six tools could be used to retrieve an out-of-reach toy. Boys engaged in more object-oriented play than girls and were more likely to use tools to retrieve the toy during the baseline tool-use task. All children who did not retrieve the toy during the baseline trials did so after being given a hint, and performance on a transfer-of-training tool-use task approached ceiling levels. This suggests that the sex difference in tool use observed during the baseline phase does not reflect a difference in competency, but rather a sex difference in motivation to interact with objects. Amount of time boys, but not girls, spent in object-oriented play during the free-play sessions predicted performance on the tool-use task. The findings are interpreted in terms of evolutionary theory, consistent with the idea that boys’ and girls’ play styles evolved to prepare them for adult life in traditional environments.
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This research was conducted in partial fulfillment of a Master of Arts degree at Florida Atlantic University by the first author. Portions of this research were presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Tampa, FL, April, 2003.
Jeffrey M. Gredlein is a Ph.D. candidate in developmental psychology and an instructor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His research interests are cognitive development, specifically problem solving in preschool children.
David F. Bjorklund is a professor of psychology at Florida Atlantic University. He is the author, with Anthony Pellegrini, of The Origins of Human Nature: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology (2002), and co-editor, with Bruce Ellis, of Origins of the Social Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and Child Development (2005). His research interests include cognitive development and evolutionary developmental psychology.
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Gredlein, J.M., Bjorklund, D.F. Sex differences in young children’s use of tools in a problem-solving task. Hum Nat 16, 211–232 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-005-1004-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-005-1004-5