Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
School of Psychology, Guizhou Normal University, Guiyang, China.
Q J Exp Psychol (Hove). 2021 May;74(5):853-871. doi: 10.1177/1747021820981862. Epub 2021 Jan 9.
The effect of the babyface schema includes three typical responses, namely, the preference response, viewing motivation, and attention bias towards infant faces. It has been theorised that these responses are primarily influenced by infants' facial structures. However, recent studies have revealed the moderating role of facial expression, suggesting that the strongest effect of the babyface schema may be related to the neutral facial expression; this hypothesis remains to be tested. In this study, the moderating role of facial expression was assessed in three successive experiments (total = 402). We used a series of images of the same face with multiple expression-standardised images of infants and adults to control for facial structure. The results indicated that the effect sizes of the babyface schema (i.e., response differences between infants and adults) were different for multiple expressions of the same face. Specifically, the effect sizes of neutral faces were significantly greater than those of happy and sad faces according to the preference response (experiment 1, = 90), viewing motivation (experiment 2, = 214), and attentional bias (experiment 3, = 98). These results empirically confirm that neutral infant facial expressions elicit the strongest effect of the babyface schema under the condition of using adult faces as a comparison baseline and matching multiple expressions of the same face.
婴儿脸效应包括三种典型的反应，即偏好反应、观看动机和对婴儿面孔的注意力偏向。理论认为，这些反应主要受婴儿面部结构的影响。然而，最近的研究揭示了面部表情的调节作用，表明婴儿脸效应的最强影响可能与中性面部表情有关；这一假设仍有待验证。在这项研究中，我们在三个连续的实验中评估了面部表情的调节作用（总计 402 人）。我们使用了一系列具有多种表情标准化的同一面孔的图像来控制面部结构。结果表明，婴儿脸效应的效应大小（即婴儿和成人之间的反应差异）因同一面孔的多种表情而不同。具体来说，根据偏好反应（实验 1， = 90）、观看动机（实验 2， = 214）和注意力偏向（实验 3， = 98），中性面孔的效应大小明显大于快乐和悲伤面孔。这些结果从经验上证实，在使用成人面孔作为比较基线并匹配同一面孔的多种表情的情况下，中性婴儿面部表情会引发婴儿脸效应的最强影响。
