{"doi":"10.31234/osf.io/e5mb8","title":"Object play in Tsimane children: Implications for tool use development and division of labour","abstract":"Sex-specific division of labour and sophisticated tool use are important features of human societies. Play may serve as a developmental mechanism to practise gender-specific object-related skills. Object play in immatures is believed to foster object-related competencies, potentially laying the foundation for tool use later in life. Here, we investigated sex differences in the ontogeny of object play in Tsimane children in Bolivia to understand its potential role in shaping gender-specific adult roles. We used observational data (>80,000 scan samples) from nine Tsimane communities collected between 2002 and 2007. We employed Bayesian multilevel models to analyse age and sex differences in object play and object types. Our results show that both overall play and object play peaked in early to middle childhood (3.5-7.5 years old), with boys spending more time playing. Moreover, boys engaged more with objects related to male-specific roles (e.g., hunting tools), while girls played more with objects related to female-specific roles (e.g., cooking utensils). Our findings suggest that object play serves as an adaptive, culturally embedded pathway to develop gender-specific adult skills. Studying developmental patterns of object play across human cultures enriches our understanding of the evolutionary contexts shaping divisions of labour.","journal":"PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)","year":2024,"id":507728,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":0,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9511,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":356874,"name":"Michael Gurven","orcid":"0000-0002-5661-527X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":528727,"name":"Hillard Kaplan","orcid":"0000-0002-7398-7358","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1359549,"name":"Ben C. Trumble","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":528724,"name":"Jonathan Stieglitz","orcid":"0000-0001-5985-9643","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":528725,"name":"Paul L. Hooper","orcid":"0000-0002-4673-7513","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1359150,"name":"Daniel J. Cummings","orcid":"0000-0001-5740-4645","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":561583,"name":"Adrian V. Jaeggi","orcid":"0000-0003-1695-0388","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":943535,"name":"Kathelijne Koops","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1359548,"name":"Ava Moser","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:11:02.460057Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}