An early sex difference in the relation between mental rotation and object preference

Accumulating evidence suggests that males outperform females on mental rotation tasks as early as infancy. Sex differences in object preference have also been shown to emerge early in development and precede sex-typed play in childhood. Although research with adults and older children is suggestive of a relationship between play preferences and visuospatial abilities, including mental rotation, little is known about the developmental origins of this relationship. The present study compared mental rotation ability and object preference in 6- to 13-month-old infants. We used a novel paradigm to examine individual differences in infants’ mental rotation abilities as well as their differential preference for one of two sex-typed objects. A sex difference was found on both tasks, with boys showing an advantage in performance on the mental rotation task and exhibiting greater visual attention to the male-typed object (i.e., a toy truck) than to the female-typed object (i.e., a doll) in comparison to girls. Moreover, we found a relation between mental rotation and object preference that varied by sex. Greater visual interest in the male-typed object was related to greater mental rotation performance in boys, but not in girls. Possible explanations related to perceptual biases, prenatal androgen exposure, and experiential influences for this sex difference are discussed.