Nursery World - A Unique Child: Cognitive Development

Gender differences in behaviour are widely accepted and extensively researched, but only now are studies revealing the biological influences in children, say Kyra Karmiloff and Annette Karmiloff-Smith.

There is no denying that boys and girls are different, but why? In trying to explain sex differences, the pendulum swings regularly from nature to nurture. Are the differences inborn, or do they arise predominantly from environmental influences?

Behavioural differences between girls and boys are apparent from early infancy, and the subject has been studied extensively over the years. But in recent years, the focus was mainly on identifying the effects of socialisation, parenting practices and physical differences between the sexes. Clearly such factors do influence how children develop, and are also responsible for some of the characteristics that mark out each sex. However, new evidence also points to influences from pre-natal exposure to hormones on later sex-typed choices and gender-differentiated motor skills. Here, we review this research with the aim of challenging some of the traditional explanations of why girls and boys develop differently.

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