Early and late event-related potentials are modulated by infant and adult faces of high and low attractiveness

Abstract

The processing of infant faces may be somewhat distinct from that of adult faces. Indeed, recent neuroimaging studies have provided evidence of an early, “baby-specific” neural response whereby infant faces are perceived more rapidly than adult faces. Using event-related potentials, the present study aimed to determine whether the preferential response to infant faces is present at both early and late stages of face processing, and to investigate the effects of esthetic appearance on the processing of adult and infant faces by directly manipulating the perceived attractiveness or cuteness within a given face identity. Here, we find evidence for enhanced processing of infant faces, relative to adult faces, at both early (N170, P2) and late (LPC) stages of face processing. We also find that the esthetic appearance of both infant and adult faces modulates early neural responses, with enhanced responses to less attractive/cute faces as compared to more attractive/cute faces. Overall, our results provide additional evidence for a preferential response to infant faces at early stages of processing, and provide new evidence that this preferential response occurs at later stages of face processing as well, independent of the esthetic quality of the face or observer sex.

Keywords:

• Face processing
• Attractiveness
• Baby
• N170
• LPC

We thank Ben Jones and Lisa DeBruine from the Face Research Lab (http://www.faceresearch.org) for the use of their images in creation of our adult stimuli. See Fisher et al. (2013) for more detail on this image set.

ORCID

Amanda Hahn http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4555-7924

Additional information

Funding

Amanda Hahn is supported by the European Research Council under Grant 282655