Sarah Gerson

Of course, not every parent is going to volunteer for their boy to play with this because I think there's going to be some bias in that.

But we had the qualification that all parents who signed up for the study had to be okay with their child playing with dolls and or playing with tablets.

So we had...

No families who were saying, my child's not allowed on screens at all.

And no families saying, my child's not allowed to play with dolls at all.

And then we randomly assigned them once we had that group to one of these two conditions.

And the benefits in boys were very similar to the benefits in girls.

So again, if the boy's comfortable and happy to do that, great.

It can be potentially helpful for them.

But I think both parents and society and children themselves will vary in their kind of comfort level with that.

Yeah, it's a really interesting question and one we can't exactly say from this particular study, but I think it's really fascinating to think about because, like I said, you get this kind of basic theory of mind when you're pretty early, pretty young in life, but there's individual differences through adulthood.

And I think...

Again, thinking about what parents take from dolls and whether they think it's fun or not and whether they think it's useful or not.

They often forget that things like social skills and empathy and understanding others is going to be really crucial foundational skills for adults.

success in life, right?

Even for careers, for education, for forming friendships and relationships and social support.

So I think there's all sorts of potential implications and we need to do more research to find out whether these kinds of early differences actually relate to that.

And that's something I'm really interested in doing in the future.

Maybe.

Give it a go.