Babies as young as nine months already prefer toys that are traditional for their sex, a study has found.

Trucks were the preferred choice for baby boys in a test, while baby girls chose to play with cooking pots.

As girls got older they took more of an interest in typical boys toys like cars and balls.

Babies as young as nine months already prefer toys that are traditional for their sex, a study has found. Trucks were the preferred choice for baby boys in a test, while baby girls chose to play with cooking pots (stock image used)

The researchers suggest this may be because parents encourage girls to play with a wider variety of toys.

But the little boys were still less inclined to dabble with dolls – possibly because it is still considered less socially acceptable.

The researchers argue that because the differences appear so early on, biology must be playing a significant role in how boys and girls develop.

Researchers from University College London and City University studied 101 infants in three groups: nine to 17 months – the earliest age that infants can demonstrate which toys they like best - 18 to 23 months and 24 to 32 months.

The tests were carried out at four multicultural nurseries in London.

The seven toys chosen to evaluate the children’s preferences were a doll, a pink teddy bear and a cooking pot for stereotypical girls’ toys, and a car, a blue teddy a digger and a ball for the boys.

Testing took place in a quiet corner of the nursery, at a time when all the boys and girls were engaged in free play.

As girls got older they took more of an interest in typical boys toys like cars and balls. The researchers suggest this may be because parents encourage girls to play with a wider variety of toys (stock image used)

The children were seated at a meter away from the toys, which were arranged in a randomised order in a semi-circle around the child.

The experimenter encouraged the child to play with the toys by saying ‘You can play with any of the toys that you want to.’

A record was then kept of which toys were touched at intervals of five seconds for three minutes.

The researchers, led by Dr Brenda Todd of City University write: ‘In general, the boys played with male-typed toys for longer than with female-typed toys and, conversely, the girls played with female-typed toys for longer than with male-typed toys.’

They said that there were six boys and eight girls in the very youngest age group, aged between nine and 12 months.

‘All of these boys played with the ball, and play with the ball accounted for 53.2 per cent of their time playing with the toys.

‘Overall the girls aged 12 months or less chose the cooking pot most frequently: seven of these eight girls played with the cooking pot, and their play with this toy accounted for 49.8 per cent of the time playing with the toys.’

The researchers argue that because there is a clear difference at such a young age this probably is a biological effect, as the babies have yet to have had extensive exposure to gender stereotypes.

The researchers found that as boys got older, they became even more interested in toys typical of their sex – although it was less true of girls.

‘The trends suggest that as boys grow older, they increasingly prefer male-typed toys, and although girls initially much prefer female-typed toys, this preference settles to a merely strong preference,’ the authors said in the study published in Infant and Child Development.

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They add: ‘Thus, it is interesting that not only are there sex differences in preference but also sex difference in the development of preference over time.’

They said their findings contradicted studies of US children aged between 14 and 35 months, which found girls increasingly showed a greater interest in ‘female-typed toys’ but this may be a difference between the US and the UK or a difference in the relative appeal of the particular toys in the study.

Explaining the results, the researchers say that the early preferences may be caused by exposure to male hormones in the womb.

This is supported by findings that show girls exposed to higher levels of male hormones are more likely to be tomboys.

And research has also shown even baby monkeys show sex differences in the toys they prefer – with male monkeys also preferring cars while female monkeys prefer the cooking pots.

Dr Todd said: ‘I think the thing that is interesting is that children are very young to be showing different preferences for different toys we offered them to play with.

‘Even in that youngest group of children we were still seeing sex differences in their preferences.'

She added: 'The other interesting thing is that as they get older, boys get more and more interested in boy toys, whereas that wasn’t the case for the girls.

'I think stereotypes are much more rigid for little boys, and even older boys, than little girls. It's’ OK for girls to play with pretty much everything, we see more pressure for girls to widen their use of toys.