Dhaka, Sept. 21 -- 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 ex...