Preference For Human Eyes in Human Infants Kelsie Turman Texas Woman's University Introduction/Purpose Over the years, there have been several hypotheses about how and why infants process face stimuli. For example, Johnson (2005) proposed that at birth, infants are born with a face detector system, which responds to the basic structural features of the human face. It was also found that infants prefer crude representations of the human face over disorganized arrangements, and images of the human face over nonhuman faces. Despite evidence supporting an early attraction to human faces, the nature of the face representation in neonates and its development during the first year after birth remain poorly …show more content…
There were 29 newborns (16 girls; 13 boys), 30 three month olds (16 girls; 14 boys), 30 six month olds (13 girls; 17 boys), 30 nine month olds (13 girls; 17 boys), and 26 twelve month olds (11 girls; 15 boys). Furthermore, 85 infants were eliminated due to interferences and technical problems, and an additional 18 infants were excluded in order to equalize sample sizes. Instruments Colored photographs of the faces of three chimpanzees and three Barbary macaques were projected onto a screen and used for the stimuli. The nonhuman primate faces were duplicated, and a copy of each was replaced with human eyes. Additionally, two different pairs of human eyes were used as examples. This resulted in a total of 12 different pairs of stimuli “(2 species x 3 individuals x 2 pairs of human eyes)” (Dupierrix et al., 2013, pg. 140). Methodology/variables Infants were seated on their parent’s lap in a room approximately 60 centimeters away from the screen (newborns were placed closer), where the images were placed side-by-side, and separated by a 13-centimeter gap. A video camera was set up in order to record the infants’ eye movements during the test when the stimulus was …show more content…
I think that once further researched, this information could prove to be very beneficial, and could possibly help in other areas of child development such as attachment. I think the more knowledge we have about the way the infant mind works, the better we will be as a society for helping cater to their wants and needs. Conclusion In recent years, there has been a wealth of information supporting infant attraction to human faces, but its reasoning and development have been poorly understood. Researchers have theorized that the human eyes have played a role in this attraction. By replacing an image of primate eyes with human eyes, and holding a constant variable of an image of a regular primate, researchers were able to test the impact human eyes have on infants’ attraction to faces. Dupierrix et al. (2014) found that in this scenario, infants 3 months and older showed preference to the image of the primate with human eyes, but newborns did not show any preference. These finding suggest that the human eyes do in fact play a role in infants’ attraction to human
.(moodle,2017)Neuroscience helps us understand that what we do with our babies matters as much as how we interact with them. It influences adults to become more self-aware and self-reflective about how we
Vision plays a huge role in the lives of non-human primates. Non-human primates have exceptional binocular vision, due to forward-facing eyes with overlapping visual fields (Prescott). This binocular stereoscopic color vision allows primates to see the world in terms of height, width, and depth, also known as three-dimensional vision (Haviland et al. 2010). Highly developed vision allows the later arboreal primates to judge depth, distance, and location when moving at speed from branch to branch (Haviland et al. 2010). This bino...
Prosopagnosia is the scientific name for what is commonly known as “face-blindness.” It is a neurological disorder characterized by a person’s lack of ability to recognize faces (“Prosopagnosia Information,” 2007). What makes a person having prosopagnosia different than a person who is just “bad with faces” is that, with prosopagnosia, a deficit in face recognition in the presence of relatively normal object recognition exists (Righart & Gelder, 2007). This means that a person with prosopagnosia cannot recognize...
Infant Behavior and Development. 9, 133 - 150. Kisilevsky et al. (2003). The 'Secondary' of the 'Secondary'.
Peek-A-boo is a game which involves two individuals, where one individual hides their eyes and face from their counterpart and then surprises them by simply uncovering their eyes or face and saying the phrase "Peek-a-boo, I see you". When the game of "Peek-a-boo" is played with a baby, the baby shows approval by being surprised as he/she smiles and laughs. Evidence of early stages of social, physical, cognitive as well as emotional growth and development is observed as the baby reacts with excitement, and mimics facial expressions. Within the early months of development of the fetal brain functions, simple emotions such as smiling or laughing while playing games such a "Peek-a-boo" reveal the development of the brain. Consequently, the neurons,
...o they had just seen and the other was a novel face. The people in the videos were each Caucasian women and each actress did a video speaking in IDS register and in ADS register. Each infant heard only one of the two registers and it was randomly selected which actress and which voice register was used in the video. Results indicated that infants looked longer at the face, showing familiarity and preference, of the woman in the video after she spoke to them using IDS. However, infants actually showed a preference for the novel face when compared with the face of the woman who spoke in an ADS register. These results once again showcase how important infant directed speech is to directing infant attention and therefore enhance learning. This also shows that IDS has a social aspect that allows infants to feel they want to recognize IDS speakers more than ADS speakers.
I do think that young infants are more competent than I originally thought they were. I was aware of the reflexes talked about in the first video, Primary Reflexes. I knew that they were born with the abilities such as the sucking, swallowing, walking, babinski, and grasping reflex, which is still pretty incredible. I was really surprised that the two-month-old baby in the video, Infant Looking Time Habituation, she could see the cayenne pepper, control where her eyes aimed, and was able to recognize that it was a repeated object that she had seen over and over again. When the cayenne pepper was placed in front of her she become bored of the familiar object and would look away sooner each time. When the celery salt was placed in front of her
Facial perception is processed in three main areas in the occipitotemporal visual extrastriate cortex. Included in this region are the inferior occipital gyri, lateral fusiform gyrus, and the superior temporal sulcus. The lateral fusiform gyrus is involved more with the formation and ideas we associate with identity. The superior temporal sulcus processes changes in the face, such as the position of the mouth to indicate a smile or wrinkling of the forehead to indicate frustration. Researchers pose that the location of the inferior occipital gyri suggests that it provides data to both the lateral fusiform and superior temporal sulcal areas (Haxby & Hoffman 2000). So far, these mechanisms in the brain seem obvious with processing facial recognition input data, but a few other mechanisms that provide cruc...
Black, M.M., & Matula, K. (1999). Essentials of bayley scales of infant development II assessment. Department of pediatrics; University of Maryland school of medicine, 1.
Children start out in life observing everything that everyone and everything around them are doing. They learn to walk, talk, and feed themselves from observing what their parents, siblings, and other people around them do. They learn these things from observing and then imitating them. “It has been found that infants as early 6 weeks old imitate facial expressions and infants 6 and 9 months of age have shown to exhibit deferred imitation of actions demonstrated with objects” (Jones, Hebert. 197). “Recently researchers at the University of Washington and Temple University have found the first evidence revealing a key aspect of the brain processing that occurs in babies to allow this learning by observation” (“Baby Brains Learn Through Imitation”). In their study they found that when a baby observed an adult touch a toy with their hand the same part of the brain that controls the same hand on the child would light up. The same was true if they observed an adult touch the toy with their foot, the foot part of the child’s brain would light up. These results showed that when babies observed someone els...
It could be assumed face perception would fit the criteria of important survival information and thus the advantages of survival processing would also be in effect. Yet a study conducted by Savine, Scullin and Roediger (2011) looked at survival processing in relation to faces to test if this was a limitation of this type of processing. Researchers cond...
Furthermore, researchers divided 9 seconds into 3 seconds long of three groups and analyzed the data from each group independently. There were no different results between genders. The researchers made a paired sample t-test and the results showed that infants lost interest as they were moving on with the three second long groups. They paid more attention to the first three seconds of the VPC test than the second three seconds, and they paid more attention to the second three seconds than they did to the last three seconds of the VPC test. The results showed that in the first three seconds, infants in the event boundary group showed a difference in their looking time to the familiar object from the cartoon and the random unfamiliar object. However, infants in the non-boundary version didn’t show a difference in their looking time to two different objects. They also have found a difference between the looking time of the familiar object from the cartoon in boundary and non-boundary versions. According to their results, they can prove that infants are affected by the environment or the events that they see the objects in. They have a stronger long term memory when it comes to remembering an object that they have seen at an event boundary. However, they have a possibility to not remember an object when they
...iful with more extreme features. Symmetry, expressions, gaze direction, familiarity, averageness, and youthfulness can all play enormous factors in how attractive a person is perceived as. “This demonstrates the incredible sophistication of the mechanisms and processes that are involved in face perception.” (Jones, B. C., DeBruine, L. M., Little, A. C., Conway, C. A. & Feinberg, D. R.(2006).)
Newborn babies are remarkable beings with extraordinary abilities and skills. In its first year, a baby experiences a tremendous amount of change – initially being completely helpless – then developing its skills enough to walk, talk and interact with the world around it. The Science of Babies is a National Geographic documentary that explores the developmental process of a baby in its first year, and presents fascinating evidence of the intricacies of a growing human mind. Thus, herein, the details of that process and the documentary will be analyzed through a developmental psychology lens.
A healthy pregnancy is a start to a good biological beginning for a baby. The developmental milestone process in infant’s progression can be normal and accurate for most stages however, a few transitions or changes in an environment can increase a delay in infants developmental milestones. As infants began to grow, then began to master normal age-related skills such as, at 2 months they would smile when he would see familiar faces. They tend to get attached to those that are familiar with. Lack of time spent with an infant biological mother, can increase attachment to his care giver vs their mother. At four months infants developed the typical motor skills for his age such as, sucking, chewing on his bottle or teething ring. Also, they also began to recognize sounds and voices, such as music. They would respond to the music he heard by kicking and eyes began to explore his environment. Infants tend to grab their hair and glasses and roll over. Playing with infants at six months and they should respond to by gurgling and making eye contact. They began to verbalize more at seven months such as cooing and gurgling in social environment they should be able to recognize those they are familiar