Children who “play like boys” in preschool show better spatial abilities a decade later

An analysis of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children data found that children with masculine-typical play styles at 3.5 years of age tend to perform better in a mental rotation task when they are 13 years old, regardless of their sex. The mental rotation task is an indicator of spatial visualization abilities. The paper was published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

Mental rotation ability refers to how accurately and quickly a person can imagine and judge objects rotated in space. It is an important indicator of spatial ability, a core component of human cognition. High performance means a person can quickly and correctly identify whether objects are the same or different when they are shown from different angles (i.e., rotated), while low performance means slower reaction times or more errors.

Mental rotation ability is important for tasks such as map reading, navigation, engineering design, medical imaging, and sports that rely on spatial reasoning. Mental rotation performance has also been used in cognitive training, aptitude testing, and neuroscience research to understand how the brain processes spatial information. Research consistently shows that, on average, males tend to outperform females on mental rotation tasks, especially when large angular rotations are required. These sex differences tend to be moderate to large in size and have been linked to both biological factors (such as hormonal influences) and sociocultural experiences (such as greater exposure to spatially demanding play or training for males).

Study authors Karson T. F. Kung and Melissa Hines wanted to investigate whether play behavior in early childhood is associated with mental rotation performance in adolescence. They hypothesized that children with masculine play styles at age 3.5 would have better mental rotation performance as 13-year-old adolescents compared to children with feminine play styles. They also hypothesized that randomly selected “control” children would perform better than children with feminine play styles.

These authors analyzed data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). ALSPAC is a longitudinal study in the UK that enrolled over 14,000 mothers and their children. It recruited pregnant women who lived within Avon in Southwest England with expected delivery dates between April 1991 and December 31, 1992.

The final analysis was based on data from the children who participated in the follow-up at age 13. This sample consisted of 66 masculine boys and 59 masculine girls, 81 feminine boys and 68 feminine girls, and 55 control boys and 67 control girls. This represents about 60% of the initial group selected for follow-up based on their preschool play behavior.

When these children were 3.5 years old, their parents completed an assessment of their play behavior (the Preschool Activities Inventory), enabling study authors to classify children into masculine, feminine, and control groups. Ten years later, when the participants were 13 years old, they completed the spatial relations subscale of the Primary Mental Abilities Test. This allowed study authors to assess their mental rotation abilities.

Results showed that masculine children scored significantly higher on the mental rotation task than did feminine children. This association was not moderated by the child’s sex and held even after the researchers controlled for sociodemographic background, academic performance, and other preschool characteristics such as vocabulary and fine motor skills.

“Sex-typical play behavior in the preschool period is related to mental rotation performance 10 years later in adolescence. Preschool sex-typical play behavior may have long-term implications for spatial skills development beyond childhood,” the study authors concluded.

The study sheds light on the links between play behavior in childhood and mental rotation abilities in adolescence. However, although the study is longitudinal, its design does not allow any causal inferences to be derived from the results. While it is possible that early masculine play supports the development of mental rotation abilities, it is also possible that children who initially had better mental rotation abilities prefer masculine play.

The paper, “A 10‑Year Longitudinal Relationship Between Preschool Sex‑Typical Play Behavior at Age 3.5 Years and Mental Rotation Performance in Adolescence at Age 13 Years,” was authored by Karson T. F. Kung and Melissa Hines.