[Sportschosun, Reporter Jang Jong-ho] A study has found that even newborns may display sex-based differences in their gaze.
Observations of newborns just a few hours old showed that female infants spent relatively more time looking at human faces than male infants.
Researchers at the Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge recently published their findings in the international academic journal Biology of Sex Differences. The study observed the gaze patterns of 130 newborns, including 67 boys and 63 girls, who were an average of 33 hours old.
The researchers showed the newborns two videos side by side. One featured a human face, while the other showed a moving metal-ball toy known as Newton's cradle. Newton's cradle is a toy in which several metal balls collide and move in succession.
The results showed that both male and female newborns tended to look at human faces rather than moving objects. However, girls spent a larger share of their total observation time looking at faces than boys did. Boys, in contrast, directed relatively more of their gaze toward the moving object, a nonsocial stimulus.
The researchers stressed that these findings should not be interpreted as meaning that girls have better concentration than boys. In fact, there was no clear sex difference in the absolute amount of time spent looking at faces or objects. The notable difference was the proportion of total gaze time devoted to faces.
The study has drawn attention because the newborns were observed at a stage when they had almost no social experience. The participants were babies observed from several hours after birth to no more than three days old. This allowed the researchers to examine early behavioral characteristics that emerge before parents, the surrounding environment, education, and social expectations can influence development.
The researchers explained that the findings may help determine whether behavioral differences between boys and girls are shaped solely by environmental influences or whether some differences exist from before birth.
In particular, the researchers are examining whether the study could offer clues to understanding neurodevelopmental characteristics such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), which differs between boys and girls in prevalence and symptoms. At this stage, however, there is no evidence that differences in newborns' gaze directly explain differences in ASD or language development.
Ultimately, the study did not simply show that girls have better concentration than boys. Rather, it found that a small difference between the two groups could be observed immediately after birth in how they distributed their gaze between human faces and moving objects. The researchers also emphasize that individual development may be shaped by interactions between biological factors before birth and the environment after birth, rather than by either innate factors or the rearing environment alone.
Jang Jong-ho, Reporter bellho@sportschosun.com
This article has been translated by GripLabs Mingo AI.
