Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• White, Hannah
• Hock, Alyson
• Jubran, Rachel
• Heck, Alison
• Bhatt, Ramesh S.

Titel

Visual scanning of male and female bodies in infancy

Ist Teil von

• Journal of experimental child psychology, 2018-02, Vol.166, p.79-95

Ort / Verlag

United States: Elsevier Inc

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• •Systematic scanning of images indicates efficient processing of relevant information.•Adults exhibit sex-specific scanning of the breast and leg regions of human images.•We found that 3.5- and 6.5-month-olds preferentially scan the torsos of females and legs of males.•Young infants systematically process cues that are significant sex-related cues in adulthood. This study addressed the development of attention to information that is socially relevant to adults by examining infants’ (N=64) scanning patterns of male and female bodies. Infants exhibited systematic attention to regions associated with sex-related scanning by adults, with 3.5- and 6.5-month-olds looking longer at the torsos of females than of males and looking longer at the legs of males than of females. However, this pattern of looking was not found when infants were tested on headless bodies in Experiment 2, suggesting that infants’ differential gaze pattern in Experiment 1 was not due to low-level stimulus features, such as clothing, and also indicating that facial/head information is necessary for infants to exhibit sex-specific scanning. We discuss implications for models of face and body knowledge development.