@article{ref1,
title="An evolutionary perspective of sex-typed toy preferences: pink, blue, and the brain",
journal="Archives of sexual behavior",
year="2003",
author="Alexander, Gerianne M.",
volume="32",
number="1",
pages="7-14",
abstract="Large sex differences in children's toy preferences are attributed to gender group identification and social learning. The proposal outlined in this paper is that contemporary conceptual categories of &quot;masculine&quot; or &quot;feminine&quot; toys are also influenced by evolved perceptual categories of male-preferred and female-preferred objects. Research on children exposed prenatally to atypical levels of androgens and research on typically developing infants suggest sex-dimorphic preferences exist for object features, such as movement or color/form. The evolution and neurobiology of mammalian visual processing--and recent findings on sex-dimorphic toy preferences in nonhuman primates--suggest further that an innate bias for processing object movement or color/form may contribute to behaviors with differential adaptive significance for males and females. In this way, preferences for objects such as toys may indicate a biological preparedness for a &quot;masculine&quot; or &quot;feminine&quot; gender role-one that develops more fully as early perceptual preferences are coupled with object experiences imposed by contemporary gender socialization.<p /><p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0004-0002",
doi="",
url="http://dx.doi.org/"
}