What a cute baby! Preliminary evidence from a fMRI study for the association between mothers’ neural responses to infant faces and activation of the parental care system

Endendijk, Joyce J.; Smit, Anne K.; Baar, Anneloes L. van; Bos, Peter A.

doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107493

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

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“…Subsequently, we performed rANOVAs for the reaction time and ERP responses to infant or adult faces with each expression (i.e., happy, neutral, or sad) and rANOVAs for difference values reflecting the magnitude of the difference in the reaction time (i.e., the degree of attentional bias) or ERP responses (i.e., the degree of exclusive neural sensitivity) to pairs of faces (i.e., infants and adults) with the same expression. This difference in response values between infant and adult faces represents the effect size of the babyface schema (Endendijk et al., 2020). It extends the babyface schema effect (i.e., adults' exclusive responses to the babyface schema) caused by infantile facial structural features (Glocker, Langleben, Ruparel, Loughead, Gur, et al., 2009; Sparko & Zebrowitz, 2011), after excluding the effect of general face recognition caused by common human facial structural features that do not belong to the babyface schema (Elbich & Scherf, 2017; Meng et al., 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To examine the exclusive neural sensitivity to the babyface schema, two typical designs isolating these general responses were developed. One is calculating the effect size of the babyface schema (i.e., the difference in response values between infant and adult faces), and the other is adjusting the number of facial structural features in the babyface schema (Endendijk et al., 2020). Based on these designs, researchers effectively extract adults' exclusive responses to the babyface schema, namely, the babyface schema effect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Infants' neutral facial expressions elicit the strongest initial attentional bias in adults: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

et al. 2021

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Recent studies that used adult faces as the baseline have revealed that attentional bias toward infant faces is the strongest for neutral expressions than for happy and sad expressions. However, the time course of the strongest attentional bias toward infant neutral expressions is unclear. To clarify this time course, we combined a behavioral dot-probe task with electrophysiological event-related potentials (ERPs) to measure adults' responses to infant and adult faces with happy, neutral, and sad expressions derived from the same face. The results indicated that compared with the corresponding expressions in adult faces, attentional bias toward infant faces with various expressions resulted in different patterns during rapid and prolonged attention stages. In particular, first, neutral expressions in infant faces elicited greater behavioral attentional bias and P1 responses than happy and sad ones did. Second, sad expressions in infant faces elicited greater N170 responses than neutral and happy ones did; notably, sad expressions elicited greater N170 responses in the left hemisphere in women than in men. Third, late positive potential (LPP) responses were greater for infant faces than for adult faces under each expression condition. Thus, we propose a three-stage model of attentional allocation patterns that reveals the time course of attentional bias toward infant faces with various expressions. This model highlights the prominent role of neutral facial expressions in the attentional bias toward infant faces.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants' neutral facial expressions elicit the strongest initial attentional bias in adults: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

et al. 2021

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“…As the baby schema was proposed with the implicit assumption that typical adult physical features could be used as a baseline for comparison, it is necessary to remove the general effect of adult faces to reveal the specific effect of infant faces, as in a series of previous studies (Brosch et al, 2007; Kringelbach et al, 2008). To this end, calculating the effect size of the babyface schema (i.e., the difference in response values between infant and adult faces) has become one of two typical designs used to examine the neural sensitivity of the baby schema (Endendijk et al, 2020). Using this type of design, scholars showed that the effect sizes of neutral faces were significantly greater than those of happy and sad faces for pleasant emotional experiences and motivational behavioural responses (Ding et al, 2016) and for attention bias (Jia et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adults’ responses to infant faces: Neutral infant facial expressions elicit the strongest baby schema effect

Jia

Ding

Cheng

et al. 2021

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

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The effect of the babyface schema includes three typical responses, namely, the preference response, viewing motivation, and attention bias towards infant faces. It has been theorised that these responses are primarily influenced by infants’ facial structures. However, recent studies have revealed the moderating role of facial expression, suggesting that the strongest effect of the babyface schema may be related to the neutral facial expression; this hypothesis remains to be tested. In this study, the moderating role of facial expression was assessed in three successive experiments (total N = 402). We used a series of images of the same face with multiple expression-standardised images of infants and adults to control for facial structure. The results indicated that the effect sizes of the babyface schema (i.e., response differences between infants and adults) were different for multiple expressions of the same face. Specifically, the effect sizes of neutral faces were significantly greater than those of happy and sad faces according to the preference response (experiment 1, N = 90), viewing motivation (experiment 2, N = 214), and attentional bias (experiment 3, N = 98). These results empirically confirm that neutral infant facial expressions elicit the strongest effect of the babyface schema under the condition of using adult faces as a comparison baseline and matching multiple expressions of the same face.

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“…In contrast, the latter method can produce more natural images because the transformation is done within empirically defined cuteness dimensions. In studies, when compared to infant faces that have been manipulated to be less cute, infant faces that have been manipulated to be cuter receive higher cuteness ratings (Glocker et al, 2009a;Borgi et al, 2014), are associated with greater efforts to see them longer (Hahn et al, 2013), activate reward-related brain regions (Glocker et al, 2009b; but see Bos et al, 2018;Endendijk et al, 2020 for null results), and modulate the amplitude of brain electrical responses reflecting early visual processing (N170 and P200, occurring less than 250 ms; Hahn et al, 2016; but see Endendijk et al, 2018, for a null result).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creation and Validation of the Japanese Cute Infant Face (JCIF) Dataset

2022

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Research interest in cuteness perception and its effects on subsequent behavior and physiological responses has recently been increasing. The purpose of the present study was to produce a dataset of Japanese infant faces that are free of portrait rights and can be used for cuteness research. A total of 80 original facial images of 6-month-old infants were collected from their parents. The cuteness level of each picture was rated on a 7-point scale by 200 Japanese people (100 men and 100 women in their 20s–60s). Prototypical high- and low-cuteness faces were created by averaging the top 10 and bottom 10 faces according to the mean cuteness ratings. Then, 50 composite faces were made by mixing two faces randomly chosen from the 60 unused middle-cuteness faces. The normative cuteness ratings of these composite faces were obtained from 229 Japanese men and women in their 20s–60s. The shape of each composite face was transformed to be cuter (+50%) or less cute (–50%) along a continuum between the high- and low-cuteness prototypical faces. A two-alternative forced-choice task (N = 587) confirmed that cuteness discrimination was better than the chance level for all 50 face pairs. Moreover, the results showed that young men had poorer sensitivity to cuteness differences in infant faces than older men and women of any age. This Japanese Cute Infant Face (JCIF, “jay-sif”) dataset, including composite face images and normative rating scores, is publicly available online.

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What a cute baby! Preliminary evidence from a fMRI study for the association between mothers’ neural responses to infant faces and activation of the parental care system

Cited by 13 publications

References 51 publications

Infants' neutral facial expressions elicit the strongest initial attentional bias in adults: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

Infants' neutral facial expressions elicit the strongest initial attentional bias in adults: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence

Adults’ responses to infant faces: Neutral infant facial expressions elicit the strongest baby schema effect

Creation and Validation of the Japanese Cute Infant Face (JCIF) Dataset

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