The Effect of Experience on Infants’ Visual Preferences

Research has shown that 3 to 4-month-olds with female primary caregivers show visual preferences for female relative to male faces (Quinn, Yahr, Kuhn, Slater, & Pascalis, 2002). Facial experience is likely an important influence on these preferences. From birth, infants’ experiences guide face processing skills. This processing ability influences the development of efficient face recognition later in life. The following study investigated (1) How visual pref­erences are influenced by real world experience with males and females, and (2) How experi­ence affects older infants’ visual preferences (i.e., 10-month-olds)

Differential Trajectories in the Development of Attractiveness Biases Toward Female and Male Targets

Across the first year, most infants have approximately 2.5 times more social interactions with women than men. There is evidence that because of this differential experience, infants develop a cognitive representation for human faces that is weighted toward female-like and attractive. Subsequently, attractiveness is more salient when infants process female relative to male faces. These early asymmetries in facial experience and the greater saliency of attractiveness for female and male targets persist into early childhood, which contributes to attractiveness influencing children’s categorization and judgments of females more strongly than for males. During middle childhood, children’s facial representations become more differentiated, which might explain increases in children’s attractiveness biases for male targets during this developmental period. By adolescence, mating interests seem to combine with these developing facial representations to influence attractiveness preferences. This chapter reviews asymmetries in the saliency of attractiveness for female and male targets from infancy to adolescence and focuses on how cognitive facial representations likely guide how attractiveness influences children’s processing of female and male targets

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2008.04.009

a b s t r a c t Parents of 2-, 5-, 8-, and 11-month-olds used two scales we developed to provide information about their infants' facial experience with familiar and unfamiliar individuals during one week. Results showed large discrepancies in the race, sex, and age of faces that infants experience during their first year with the majority of their facial experience being with their primary caregiver, females, and other individuals of the same-race and age as their primary caregiver. The infant's age and an unfamiliar individual's sex were predictive of their time spent interacting with one another. Moreover, an unfamiliar individual's sex was predictive of the attention infants allocated during social interactions. Differences in frequency and length of interactions with certain types of faces, as well as in infant attention toward certain individuals, all likely contribute to the development of expertise in processing commonly experienced face types and deficiencies in processing less commonly experienced face types

How Children and Adults Make Judgments About Who To Trust

Beauty is Good Stereotype : Higher attractive individuals are thought to be more intelligent, more successful, and happier overall. They also obtain more visual attention and are deemed more trustworthy. Making a choice based on a person\u27s appearance and attributes might lead to dangerous consequences and lead to being deceived. We investigated how the appearance of male and female experts influence whether children and adults trust statements made by the expert, establish what that expert knows and determine that expert\u27s attributes (warmth and competence). The results of this study will help us better determine what cues children and adults use when making trustworthiness decisions.https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/durep_posters/1085/thumbnail.jp

How experience influences infants’ recognition of male and female faces

Young infants with female primary caregivers are able to differentiate familiar female faces from novel female faces but not male faces. Experience processing faces may be important for being able to discriminate among similar-looking faces. Subsequently, increasing infants’ experience with less familiar faces should improve their ability to differentiate those types of faces. This study examined if infants’ experience with faces affected their recognition of new faces. Prior to testing, 2-3 month old infants were assigned to one of three conditions: a male video, a female video, and no video condition. Infants were familiarized to both male and female faces during test. For the male faces, infants who saw the male video showed a familiarity preference, infants who saw the female video showed a novelty preference, and infants who saw no video showed no preference. For female faces, infants showed no preference when assigned to the male video and no video condition, while infants assigned to the female video (n = 5) showed a familiarity preference. A follow up infant-controlled habituation study tested if infants processed faces featurally or holistically. During testing, infants saw one familiar face, one composite face, and one novel face. None of the infants in the male video, female video, or no video conditions were able to distinguish the familiar face from the composite face. Only infants in the female video condition showed an increase in looking time from the familiar face to the novel face

Frequency of medically attended adverse events following tetanus and diphtheria toxoid vaccine in adolescents and young adults: a Vaccine Safety Datalink study

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Local reactions are the most commonly reported adverse events following tetanus and diphtheria toxoid (Td) vaccine and the risk of local reactions may increase with number of prior Td vaccinations.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>To estimate the risk of medically attended local reactions following Td vaccination in adolescents and young adults we conducted a six-year retrospective cohort study assessing 436,828 Td vaccinations given to persons 9 through 25 years of age in the Vaccine Safety Datalink population from 1999 through 2004.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Overall, the estimated risk of a medically attended local reaction was 3.6 events per 10,000 Td vaccinations. The lowest risk (2.8 events per 10,000 vaccinations) was found in the 11 to 15 year old age group. In comparison with that group, the event risks were significantly higher in both the 9 to 10 and 21 to 25 year old age groups. The risk of a local reaction was significantly higher in persons who had received another tetanus and diphtheria toxoid containing vaccine (TDCV) in the previous five years (incidence rate ratio, 2.9; 95% confidence interval, 1.2 to 7.2). Twenty-eight percent of persons with a local reaction to Td vaccine were prescribed antibiotics.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Medically attended local reactions were uncommon following Td vaccination. The risk of those reactions varied by age and by prior receipt of TDCVs. These findings provide a point of reference for future evaluations of the safety profile of newer vaccines containing tetanus or diphtheria toxoid.</p

Children\u27s attractiveness, gender, and race biases: A comparison of their strength and generality

Although research suggests that facial attractiveness biases significantly affect social development and interactions, these biases are understudied in the developmental literature and are overlooked when designing interventions relative to gender and race. The authors, therefore, compared how much bias 3- to 11-year-olds (N = 102) displayed in the three domains. They also examined whether bias and flexibility (understanding that different social groups can possess similar attributes) were related across domains. Children\u27s attractiveness biases, particularly for girl targets, were as strong as or stronger than gender or race biases. Flexibility, but not bias, was related across domains. Developmental scientists and policy makers should increase efforts toward understanding development of attractiveness biases and determine which methods of teaching flexibility are most successful at reducing bias across domains

How mood and task complexity affect children’s recognition of others’ emotions

Previous studies examined how mood affects children\u27s accuracy in matching emotional expressions and labels (label-based tasks). This study was the first to assess how induced mood (positive, neutral, or negative) influenced five- to eight-year-olds\u27 accuracy and reaction time using both context-based tasks, which required inferring a character\u27s emotion from a vignette, and label-based tasks. Both tasks required choosing one of four facial expressions to respond. Children responded more accurately to label-based questions relative to context-based questions at the age of five to seven, but showed no differences at the age of eight, and when the emotional expression being identified was happiness, sadness, or surprise, but not disgust. For the context-based questions, children were more accurate at inferring sad and disgusted emotions compared with happy and surprised emotions. Induced positive mood facilitated five-year-olds\u27 processing (decreased reaction time) in both tasks compared with induced negative and neutral moods. Results demonstrate how task type and children\u27s mood influence children\u27s emotion processing at different ages