Infant responses to adult-defined unattractive male body shapes versus attractive male body shapes were assessed using visual preference and habituation procedures. Looking behavior indicated that 9-month-olds have a preference for unattractive male body shapes over attractive ones; however, this preference is demonstrated only when head…

The present study examined whether 6- and 9-month-old Caucasian infants could categorize faces according to race. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized with different female faces from a common ethnic background (i.e. either Caucasian or Asian) and then tested with female faces from a novel race category. Nine-month-olds were able to form…

Human infants, just a few days of age, are known to prefer attractive human faces. We examined whether this preference is human-specific. Three- to 4-month-olds preferred attractive over unattractive domestic and wild cat (tiger) faces (Experiments 1 and 3). The preference was not observed when the faces were inverted, suggesting that it did not…

A visual preference procedure was used to examine preferences among faces of different ethnicities (African, Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern) in Chinese 3-month-old infants exposed only to Chinese faces. The infants demonstrated a preference for faces from their own ethnic group. Alongside previous results showing that Caucasian infants…

Studies of orientation perception in infants and children have revealed an "oblique effect," that is, a performance advantage for tasks involving horizontal and vertical stimulus orientations compared with tasks involving oblique orientations. The two studies reported support the hypothesis that oblique stimulus orientations are treated…

Four experiments examined the ability of infants to form categorical representations for the spatial relations "above" and "below." Found that three- and four-month-olds could form categorical representations for above and below when a diamond-shape was presented above or below a horizontal bar but could not do so when a number…

Three experiments using the familiarization-novelty preference procedure confirmed the hypothesis that three-month-old infants could form categorical representations of spatial relations above and below. The infants, after being shown a familiarization diagram with a dot appearing in multiple locations below a line, showed a preference for a novel…

Reviews the research literature on the abilities of infants to categorize visual information on dot patterns; schematic faces; hue; and orientation. (HOD)