I wrote a post on Spelke a couple while back.You had to be brainwashed to believe the shit she wrote,yet it was in a peer reviewed journal.Sigh...
Now I come upon this gem of hers from a debate:
At the top of their list of myths was the idea that males are primarily interested in objects and females are primarily interested in people. They reviewed an enormous literature, in which babies were presented with objects and people to see if they were more interested in one than the other. They concluded that there were no sex differences in these interests.
Steady there.The book which she says did this is an old 1974 book,called the Psychology of Sex differences.Such an old book is not prima facie evidence because science gets updated often.Let's see nonetheless what the book had to say:
There is evidence that boys and girls make somewhat different choices even at this early age,but the toy attributes responsible for the choices are obscure.
So boys and girls really do play with different toys,even though the cause is unclear,i.e. it cannot be understood whether boys want objects or girls people.
Hold on,though.To spelke's position,any gender difference in toy preference is anathema,because it suggests fundamental psychological sex differences.Spelke is, as far as I know, a denier of these(skeptics can simply google it-it's true).So why does she cite something that will likely be problematic for her position?
Because 99.99% of readers will never ever check up on the old psychology tome to see whether Spelke was wrong or right.(Incidentally,Spelke also cites SMPY data in one of her papers(which I have discussed) which contains a few elements supportive of her,which not unsurprisingly is the only portion of the data she cites.The rest of the SMPY data contradicts her thesis outright,yet she goes ahead and ignores it...because 99.99% won't even check.)
Now obviously,usually we do see boys preferring objects over people a bit,so I am quite confused as to why the Psychology of sex differences drew its conclusion.Apparently boys were concentrated quite a bit on masculine toys,but they did not always prefer object toys-on one occasion apparently they chose dolls for novelty according to the book.While that's all well and good-here is some more info.
Sex differences in the brain,a book by Becker,Barkley and Geary,gives an interesting table of sex-typed play:
(The differences are in d, that is,standard deviations)
Balls:.66
Bikes:.74
Blocks:1.05
Play figure male:1.01
Pretend play male:1.01
Trucks:0.92
There are some definite anomalies here:for example,look at play figures and pretend play.They are both more people oriented than trucks-yet more heavily segregrated by gender.What the hell?
The real issue is that more than object vs people dynamics are in play.Recall the savannah,where all male hunting teams went for some killing.Play figures may simply reflect the same-sex co-operation required for such an activity reflected in a need to play with figures representing male teammates.Such hunting teams still exist now-they have just changed names and purpose(Sports,D'oh!)
Pretend play is much the same case-the Psychology of sex differences says boys tend to be more sex-stereotyped in play and this pretend play may reflect their need to assert masculinity.
Above all,keep in mind that these are just hypotheses.Don't take these for gospel truth.Just remember that psychology is a lot more complex than an objects=boys/people=girls generalization.
Not one woman.