The study’s authors suggest that this discrepancy may emerge from differences in boys’ and girls’ experience: boys are more likely to play with spatially oriented toys and video games, they note, and may become more comfortable making spatial gestures as a result. Another study, this one conducted with four-year-olds, reported that children who were encouraged to gesture got better at rotating mental objects, another task that draws heavily on spatial-thinking skills. Girls in this experiment were especially likely to benefit from being prompted to gesture.
