Infants prefer familiar adults (e.g. parents) to unfamiliar adults (e.g. strangers),
but they also vary in which strangers they prefer. By 6-months, infants look longer at
attractive than unattractive faces (e.g., Langlois et al., 1987); and by 12-months, infants
show approach behaviors toward attractive strangers and withdrawal behaviors toward
unattractive strangers (Langlois, Roggman, & Rieser-Danner, 1990). These preferences
may be due to a mechanism referred to as cognitive averaging (e.g., Rubenstein,
Kalakanis, & Langlois, 1999). Infants cognitively average face exemplars to form a face
prototype. Infants likely perceive attractive faces as familiar because these faces are
similar to the face prototype; and they likely perceive unattractive faces as especially
novel because these face are dissimilar from the face prototype. Even young infants may
be more motivated to approach attractive than unattractive faces but do not fully express
this motivation due to limitations in locomotion and communication. I applied EEG asymmetry to study neural correlates of approach and withdrawal
motivation in response to attractive and unattractive faces with 6- and 10-month-olds.
More specifically, I measured EEG alpha power at mid-frontal regions while 39 infants
viewed a series of attractive and unattractive faces. Left EEG asymmetry relates to
approach motivation whereas right EEG asymmetry relates to withdrawal motivation. I
predicted infants would show greater left EEG asymmetry (i.e., approach motivation)
when viewing attractive faces than when viewing unattractive faces, and that 6-montholds
would show even greater left asymmetry than 10-month-olds due to developmental
differences in stranger wariness.
Results supported the main hypothesis but not hypotheses regarding age. Infant
EEG asymmetry was greater in response to attractive faces than unattractive faces
suggesting that infants are more motivated to approach attractive people than unattractive
people as early as 6-months. These results link visual preferences evident at 6-months to
overt behaviors evident by 12-months providing additional information regarding
rudiments of attractiveness stereotypes. Furthermore, this investigation supports the use
of EEG asymmetry methodology to measure infant approach/withdrawal motivation,
providing infant researchers one more tool to better understand how infants evaluate
novel individuals in their social environment as they decide whom to approach and whom
to avoid. / text
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTEXAS/oai:repositories.lib.utexas.edu:2152/6611 |
| Date | 22 October 2009 |
| Creators | Partridge, Teresa Taylor |
| Source Sets | University of Texas |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | electronic |
| Rights | Copyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works. |
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