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Background: Aggression is an important risk factor for delinquency and crime in adolescents. Previous studies have indicated that childhood maltreatment plays an important role in the development of aggression. However, whether the effect could be mediated by other factors is still unknown. Evidence suggests that callous-unemotional (CU) traits and self-control may be candidate mediators in the relationship between childhood maltreatment and aggression.

Research on the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness has mainly focused on adult faces. Recent studies have revealed that the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness in infant faces is not the same as that in adult faces. Therefore, it is necessary to summarize the evidence on the processing of facial attractiveness in each kind of face and compare their underlying mechanisms. In this paper, we first reviewed studies on the cognitive processing of facial attractiveness in adult faces, including attentional and mnemonic processing, and then discussed the underlying mechanisms. Afterward, studies on facial attractiveness in infant faces were reviewed, and the underlying mechanisms were also discussed. Direct comparisons between the two kinds of cognitive processing were subsequently made. The results showed that the mechanisms for the processing of attractiveness in adult faces and infant faces are mainly motivated by the perspectives of mate selection and raising offspring, respectively, in evolutionary psychology. Finally, directions for future research are proposed.

The present study was aimed to examine attentional biases toward attractive and unattractive faces among face dissatisfied women. Twenty-seven women with high face dissatisfaction (HFD) and 27 women with low face dissatisfaction (LFD) completed a visual dot-probe task while their eye-movements were tracking. Under the condition of faces-neutral stimuli (vases) pairs, compared to LFD women, HFD women directed their first fixations more often toward faces, directed their first fixations toward unattractive faces more quickly, and had longer first fixation duration on such faces. All participants had longer overall gaze duration on attractive faces than on unattractive ones. Our behavioral data revealed that HFD women had difficulty in disengaging their attention from faces. However, there are no group differences in stimulus pairs containing an attractive and an unattractive face. In sum, when faces were paired with neutral stimuli (vases) HFD women showed an attention pattern characterized by orienting and maintenance, at least initially, toward unattractive faces but showed overall attention maintenance to attractive ones, but any attention bias wasn’t found in attractive - unattractive face pairs.

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