Quinn Paul C, Kelly David J, Lee Kang, Pascalis Olivier, Slater Alan M
Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, USA.
Dev Sci. 2008 Jan;11(1):76-83. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2007.00647.x.
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 arise from low-level image differences (Experiments 2 and 3). In addition, the spontaneous preference for attractive tiger faces influenced performance in a recognition memory task involving attractive versus unattractive tiger face pairings (Experiment 4). The findings suggest that infant preference for attractive faces reflects the activity of general processing mechanisms rather than a specific adaptation to mate choice.
众所周知，出生仅几天的人类婴儿就更喜欢有吸引力的人脸。我们研究了这种偏好是否是人类特有的。三到四个月大的婴儿更喜欢有吸引力的家猫和野生猫（老虎）的脸，而不是没有吸引力的脸（实验1和3）。当脸倒置时，这种偏好就没有出现，这表明它不是由低级图像差异引起的（实验2和3）。此外，对有吸引力的老虎脸的自发偏好影响了一项涉及有吸引力与没有吸引力的老虎脸配对的识别记忆任务的表现（实验4）。研究结果表明，婴儿对有吸引力的脸的偏好反映了一般加工机制的活动，而不是对配偶选择的特定适应。
