Published : 21 Sep 2026, 08:17 PM
Updated : 21 Sep 2026, 08:17 PM
Newborn girls appear to pay more attention to human faces than boys, suggesting some behavioural differences may have biological roots rather than being entirely learned, a new study has found.
Researchers at the University of Cambridge showed side-by-side videos of a woman’s face and a Newton’s cradle toy to 130 newborns aged between eight hours and three days at the Rosie Hospital in Cambridge, The Guardian reports.
Both girls and boys looked at the face more than the toy, but girls favoured the face by a wider margin.
The findings were published in the journal Biology of Sex Differences.
Because the newborns were only hours or days old, researchers said cultural influences or social experience were unlikely to explain the difference.
Biological factors, including genetics and varying exposure to testosterone in the womb, are considered the most likely explanations.
Male foetuses are exposed to more than twice as much testosterone as females during the first and second trimesters. Previous research has also identified similar sex-related differences in brain structure at birth, according to The Guardian.
The researchers stressed that the findings describe average differences between groups and do not apply to every individual, with substantial overlap between the sexes.
The Cambridge team suggested that stronger social attention among newborn girls could help explain established patterns such as girls learning to speak earlier and developing certain social skills sooner than boys, The Guardian reports.
Researchers are also examining whether early differences between the sexes could be linked to the higher rates of autism and ADHD among males and the greater prevalence of anxiety and depression among females.
