Paukner Annika, Bower Seth, Simpson Elizabeth A, Suomi Stephen J
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Laboratory of Comparative Ethology, Poolesville, Maryland.
Infant Child Dev. 2013 May;22(3):320-330. doi: 10.1002/icd.1793.
Faces are visually attractive to both human and nonhuman primates. Human neonates are thought to have a broad template for faces at birth and prefer face-like to non-face-like stimuli. To better compare developmental trajectories of face processing phylogenetically, here we investigated preferences for face-like stimuli in infant rhesus macaques using photographs of real faces. We presented infant macaques aged 15-25days with human, macaque, and abstract faces with both normal and linear arrangements of facial features, and measured infants' gaze durations, number of fixations, and latency to look to each face using eye-tracking technology. There was an overall preference for normal over linear facial arrangements for abstract and monkey faces, but not human faces. Moreover, infant macaques looked less at monkey faces than at abstract or human faces. These results suggest that species and facial configurations affect face processing in infant macaques, and we discuss potential explanations for these findings. Further, carefully controlled studies are required to ascertain whether infant macaques' face template can be considered as broad as human infants' face template.
面孔对人类和非人类灵长类动物在视觉上都具有吸引力。人类新生儿被认为在出生时就有一个宽泛的面孔模板，并且比起非面孔类刺激，更喜欢面孔类刺激。为了更好地从系统发育角度比较面孔加工的发展轨迹，我们在这里使用真实面孔的照片，研究了猕猴幼崽对类面孔刺激的偏好。我们向15至25天大的猕猴幼崽呈现人类面孔、猕猴面孔以及面部特征有正常排列和线性排列的抽象面孔，并使用眼动追踪技术测量幼崽对每张面孔的注视时长、注视次数以及看向每张面孔的潜伏期。对于抽象面孔和猕猴面孔，总体上幼崽更偏好面部特征正常排列而非线性排列的面孔，但对人类面孔则不然。此外，猕猴幼崽看向猕猴面孔的时间比看向抽象面孔或人类面孔的时间少。这些结果表明，物种和面部构型会影响猕猴幼崽的面孔加工，我们讨论了这些发现的潜在解释。此外，需要进行严格控制的研究，以确定猕猴幼崽的面孔模板是否能被认为与人类婴儿的面孔模板一样宽泛。
