Infants prefer the faces of strangers or mothers to morphed faces: An uncanny valley between social novelty and familiarity

Biology Letters

Volumn 8, Issue 5, 2012, Pages 725-728

  Matsuda, Yoshi Taka ^a,b   Okamoto, Yoko ^a   Ida, Misako ^a   Okanoya, Kazuo ^a,b,c   Myowa Yamakoshi, Masako ^a,d  

^a JAPAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AGENCY   (Japan)

^b RIKEN BRAIN SCIENCE INSTITUTE   (Japan)

^c UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO   (Japan)

^d KYOTO UNIVERSITY   (Japan)

Author keywords

Development; Face perception; Mother; Preferential looking; Stranger; Uncanny valley

Indexed keywords

AVOIDANCE REACTION; COMPUTER; FAMILIARITY; PERCEPTION;

EID: 84866702920     PISSN: 17449561     EISSN: 1744957X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0346     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. Mori, M. 1970 The uncanny valley. Energy 7, 33-35.
2. Seyama, J. & Nagayama, R. S. 2007 The uncanny valley: effect of realism on the impression of artificial human faces. Presence-Teleop. Virt. Enviorn. 16, 337-351. (doi:10-1162/pres.16-4.337)
3. MacDorman, K. F., Green, R. D., Ho, C.-C. & Koch, C. T. 2009 Too real for comfort? Uncanny responses to computer generated faces. Comput. Hum. Behav. 25, 695-710. (doi:10-1016/j.chb.2008-12.026)
4. Steckenfinger, S. A. & Ghazanfar, A. A. 2009 Monkey visual behavior falls into the uncanny valley. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 106, 18 362-18 366. (doi:10-1073/pnas.0910063106)
5. Lewkowicz, D. J. & Ghazanfar, A. A. 2012 The development of the uncanny valley in infants. Dev. Psychobiol. 54, 124-132. (doi:10-1002/dev.20583)
6. Houston-Price, C. & Nakai, S. 2004 Distinguishing novelty and familiarity effects in infant preference procedures. Infant Behav. Dev. 13, 341-348. (doi:10-1002/icd.364)
7. Zajonc, R. B. 1968 Attitudinal effects of mere exposure. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. Monogr. Suppl. 9, 1-27. (doi:10-1037/h0025848)
8. Fantz, R. L. 1963 Pattern vision in newborn infants. Science 140, 296-297. (doi:10-1126/science.140-3564.296)
9. de Haan, M. & Nelson, C. A. 1997 Recognition of the mother's face by six-month-old infants: a neurobehavioral study. Child Dev. 68, 187-210. (doi:10-1111/j.1467-8624-1997.tb01935.x)
10. Nakato, E., Otsuka, Y., Kanazawa, S., Yamaguchi, M. K., Honda, Y. & Kakigi, R. 2011 I know this face: neural activity during mother's face perception in 7-to 8-month-old infants as investigated by near-infrared spectroscopy. Early Hum. Dev. 87, 1-7. (doi:10-1016/j.earlhumdev.2010-08.030)
11. Nakato, E., Kanazawa, S., Yamaguhi, M. K. & Kakigi, R. 2009 Configural information in mother's face perception for infants. J. Vision 9, article 551. (doi:10-1167/9-8.551)
12. Pascalis, O., de Schonen, S., Morton, J., Deruelle, C. & Fabre-Grenet, M. 1995 Mother's face recognition by neonates: a replication and an extension. Infant Behav. Dev. 18, 79-85. (doi:10-1016/0163-6383(95)90009-8)
13. Wilcox, B. M. & Clayton, F. L. 1968 Infantvisual fixation onmotion pictures ofthehumanface. J. Exp. Child Psychol. 6, 22-32. (doi:10-1016/0022- 0965(68)90068-4)
14. Gottlieb, G. 1991 Experiential canalization of behavioral development: theory. Dev. Psychol. 27, 4-13. (doi:10-1037/0012-1649-27.1-4)
15. Nelson, C. A. 2001 The development and neural bases of face recognition. Infant Behav. Dev. 10, 3-18. (doi:10-1002/icd.239)
16. Pascalis, O., de Haan, M. & Nelson, C. A. 2002 Is face processing species-specific during the first year of life? Science 296, 1321-1323. (doi:10-1126/science.1070223)
17. Werker, J. F. & Tees, R. C. 2005 Speech perception as a window for understanding plasticity and commitment in language systems of the brain. Dev. Psychobiol. 46, 233-251. (doi:10-1002/dev.20060)
18. Lewkowicz, D. J. & Ghazanfar, A. A. 2009 The emergence of multisensory systems through perceptual narrowing. Trends Cogn. Sci. 13, 470-478. (doi:10-1016/j.tics.2009-08.004)