The mobile/face study has not been reproduced. Researchers who tried again, making the study gender-blind (i.e. dressing the babies in gender neutral outfits and not looking at the names) found that there was no significant differences. [4]
[3] is thoroughly conditioned into women [5]. Not only do people say that males are more visually intelligent, boys take part in more activities that develop spatial reasoning and coordination, namely sports and video games. This difference starts at a young age, with boys receiving more functional toys that develop logic and hand eye coordination, while girls receive more dolls, dollhouses, stoves, strollers, etc.
> Gender differences were found [] due to an increase in girls' gaze behavior. Girls also made more eye contact in female–female dyads and in the second interaction over the first. Boys' behavior remained unchanged over time. The data provide evidence for gender differences in mutual gaze in a younger sample and wider context than previously demonstrated.
This seems to reinforce the claim that there are gender differences, doesn't it? (I don't have access to the full paper and can't see the result you're referring to)
> This difference starts at a young age, with boys receiving more functional toys that develop logic and hand eye coordination, while girls receive more dolls, dollhouses, stoves, strollers, etc.
Did you know that a monkey research study examined toy and play preferences of male and female monkeys? Like humans, male adolescent monkeys prefer to play with wheeled vehicles, while the females prefer dolls. "Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences parallel those of children" [7]:
> Sex differences in juvenile activities, such as rough and tumble play, peer preferences, and infant interest, share similarities in humans and monkeys. Thus if activity preferences shape toy preferences, male and female monkeys may show toy preferences similar to those seen in boys and girls. We compared the interactions of 34 rhesus monkeys, living within a 135 monkey troop, with human wheeled toys and plush toys. Male monkeys, like boys, showed consistent and strong preferences for wheeled toys, while female monkeys, like girls, showed greater variability in preferences. Thus, the magnitude of preference for wheeled over plush toys differed significantly between males and females.
The abstract is phrased in the way that it's most sensationalist to the neuroscience community, unfortunately. The authors said that they found effects in a follow up study, but in the initial study that replicated [2] they found no significant results. Leeb and Rejskind's analysis suggests that the expectations of the experimenters influenced the study in the previous example.
The thing is, talk to girls -- they don't actually like to play with dolls. Many of them envied the lego sets and toy cars of their male peers.
I'm losing steam. I might flesh this out tomorrow. I've been arguing with people far less reasonable than you all day.
Spatial reasoning does seem to have strong male/female correlation. Give a hundred men and a hundred woman a map and an address to reach, and guess which cohort gets there more easily? Or give the same groups a Lego set and the instruction booklet (especially the tediously piece-by-piece modern ones), and see which population completes the set more quickly and more accurately.
Do you have a source, or is this a thought experiment?
> Or give the same groups a Lego set and the instruction booklet (especially the tediously piece-by-piece modern ones), and see which population completes the set more quickly and more accurately.
fwiw, Lego are overwhelmingly marketed to, and given to, boys. I'm not sure it's safe to draw a conclusion from this.
[3] is thoroughly conditioned into women [5]. Not only do people say that males are more visually intelligent, boys take part in more activities that develop spatial reasoning and coordination, namely sports and video games. This difference starts at a young age, with boys receiving more functional toys that develop logic and hand eye coordination, while girls receive more dolls, dollhouses, stoves, strollers, etc.
[4] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3ASERS.00000110...
[5] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21876159