While men tended to choose blue-green hues, women more often selected reddish/purply shades of blue.Study author Yahzu Ling suggests that this color preference evolved due to the female role of gathering berries; or, perhaps, their caregiving tendency to respond to a child red with fever. Adult women's preferences for pink hues are more likely to be a remnant of childhood classical conditioning.Sex differences in empathy emerge in infancy and persist throughout development, though the gap between adult women and men is larger than between girls and boys.The early appearance of any sex difference suggests it is innately programmed—selected for through evolution and fixed into our behavioral development through either prenatal hormone exposure or early gene expression differences.I should not have been shocked to get my very own remote-controlled car that Christmas. The car was black and had a spider emblem on the side. Last week, The Conversation published a piece by Melissa Hines, Professor of Psychology at Cambridge University, addressing gender differences in toy preference."Santa must have written the wrong name," 6-year-old me declared, ruffling through the pile of balled-up wrapping paper to check. Towards the second half of the article, the focus shifts toward girls' preferences for pink and its implications on cognitive development in both males and females.

(Men’s brains are about 10 percent larger than women’s, overall, so any comparison of specific brain regions must be scaled in proportion to this difference.) This subdivision, known as the straight gyrus (SG), is a narrow strip of cerebral cortex running along the midline on the undersurface of the frontal lobe.Although both adult males and females, overall, prefer blue to pink, some studies have gone so far as to claim that the female tendency toward pink packs an evolutionary advantage.In a 2007 study by researchers at Newcastle University, study participants were asked to move a computer cursor as quickly as they could over their preferences from a series of paired, colored rectangles.Texting has become an integral part of communication.So next time when you want to text your girlfriend/boyfriend, spice up the things and play a game instead!My brother got a remote-controlled race car for his 4th birthday.Me, being the jealous big sister, begged and pleaded to play with the car at every opportunity.Any difference in the structure or activation of male and female brains is indisputably biological.However, the assumption that such differences are also innate or “hardwired” is invalid, given all we’ve learned about the plasticity, or malleability of the brain. Recent research by Peg Nopoulos, Jessica Wood and colleagues at the University of Iowa illustrates just how difficult it is to untangle nature and nurture, even at the level of brain structure.If you've read my previous posts or have read my book you know that I strongly believe that every 10 year old today needs to know as much about sex and sexuality that we would typically think a 16 year old needs to know.We need to ensure that we establish ourselves as approachable parents on all matters sexual BEFORE our kids get to adolescence and their peers and the media become more influential than they are during childhood.A 2010 study by Hines and colleagues found that among 120 infants aged 12, 18, and 24 months, both genders prefer red hues over blue, as well as rounded objects over angular shapes.At 12 months, all infants pay more attention to dolls over cars; however, at 18 and 24 months, little boys spend significantly more time looking at cars over dolls—a result of acquired preference for cars, or learned avoidance of dolls?I'll get to my thoughts in a moment, but let me first say that I know a number of you are probably skeptical, not sure that a fifth grader needs to know as much about sex as a high school kid does.I know, because I speak to a lot of parents of 10 year olds and they tell me. My twenty-five plus years as Director of Health for the New York City Public Schools and the tens of thousands of kids I have spoken with about sex and sexuality have taught me one very import fact.