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Can a non-specific bias toward top-heavy patterns explain newborns' face preference?
No full textThis study examined newborns’ face preference using
images of natural and scrambled faces in which the location
of the inner features was distorted. The results demonstrate that
newborns’ face preference is not confined to schematic configurations, but can be obtained also with veridical faces. Moreover, this phenomenon is not produced by a specific bias toward the face geometry, but derives from a domain-general bias toward configurations with more elements in the upper than in the
lower half (i.e., top-heavy patterns). These results suggest that
it may be unnecessary to assume the existence of a prewired
tendency to orient toward the face geometry, and support the
idea that faces do not possess a special status in newborns’ visual
world
Face preference at birth: The role of an orienting mechanism
No full textIt has been proposed that newborns' preferential orienting to faces is solely controlled by a subcortically mediated orienting mechanism (i.e. Conspec). In contrast, preferential-looking tasks show that face preference at birth manifests itself also with measures that index fixation duration. It is possible, however, that orienting and fixation duration are confounded and only orienting matters. The present study used a revised version of the preferential-looking technique, in which the same stimulus (i.e. a facelike or a non-facelike pattern) was simultaneously presented to both sides of the visual field. Results showed that longer total fixation times on the facelike stimuli resulted from the sum of a greater number of brief fixations, rather than from the sum of a small number of long fixations. These findings support the hypothesis that, for facelike patterns, the duration of infant's fixation on the stimulus is determined by the nature of the pattern that impinges on the periphery of the visual field, more than by the nature of the pattern that is being looked at
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