Here ’s how our visual system decides how cute a baby is

By Emma Young What makes one baby seem cuter than another (parental bias aside)? Large and round eyes, a small nose and mouth, a high and protruding forehead, chubby cheeks and soft skin have all been associated with cuteness, not just in babies but puppies, kittens, dolls and Japanese anime and manga characters. But now a new paper in Emotion suggests that another factor has an impact: the “spatial frequency” of what we see. Our visual system uses spatial frequencies to rapidly process variations in relative light and dark in an image. “Low” spatial frequencies convey coarse information — the location of a dark eye against pale skin, for example. “High” spatial frequencies convey fine detail such as edges. But other frequencies are important, too; research shows that medium spatial frequencies are most useful for recognising faces, for example. Spatial frequency (SF) processing is the basic mechanism for visual analysis, write Mengni Zhou at Okayama University, Japan, and colleagues. “Therefore understanding the effect of SFs is essential for a better understanding of the processing of cuteness,” they argue. The team first asked 32 participants from Okayama University to rate the cuteness of 40 black and white images of infant faces (aged up to one). Using these ratings, the researchers assembled a set of four faces from the bottom cuteness quartile. They did the same for the second, third and top cuteness quartile...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Babies Perception Source Type: blogs