HONG KONG, Oct. 6 -- A groundbreaking seven-year study from the Chinese University of Hong Kong has found that giving girls toys traditionally marketed to boys-such as model cars and building kits-can significantly enhance their spatial reasoning skills, a key predictor of success in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields.

SCMP reported that in the study led by Professor Ivy Wong Wang, director of the university's gender studies programme, the research tracked 644 children aged five to six beginning in 2014, with a follow-up on 210 of them as teenagers between 2021 and 2023.

The study revealed that children who engaged more frequently with boy-typical toys demonstrated stronger mental transformation abilities, a...