Babies show an eye for faces. (Behavior).Just how soon babies can perceive specific features of their world is a hot topic among psychologists. A new study in this area has found that by 9 weeks of age, babies can learn to recognize and favor a new face in a matter of minutes A Matter of Minutes is an episode from the television series The New Twilight Zone. Cast
If calm infants spent a brief period--3 1/2 minutes, in this study--looking into the eyes of a smiling female stranger who also delivered a sweet-tasting drink or pacifier, they subsequently preferred looking at that person rather than another stranger. A pacifier dipped in sugar water yielded the strongest face preferences with 9-week-olds; squirts of a sucrose solution from a sterile syringe worked best with 12-week-olds. "These data point to the centrality of eye [contact] in learning about faces and establishing facial preferences in 2- and 3-month-olds," say Elliott M. Blass and Carol A. Camp, both psychologists at the University of Massachusetts The system includes UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth (affiliated with Cape Cod Community College), UMass Lowell, and the UMass Medical School. It also has an online school called UMassOnline. at Amherst. In crying babies, comparable eye contact with a stranger offering a sweet treat slowed the flow of tears but didn't result in a subsequent preference for that person's face, Blass and Camp report in the November DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY developmental psychology Branch of psychology concerned with changes in cognitive, motivational, psychophysiological, and social functioning that occur throughout the human life span. . The researchers studied 140 infants, all 9 weeks or 12 weeks old. Secured in a seat, each baby sat facing a female researcher who either gazed into the child's eyes or looked above the infant's forehead while delivering one of the two sweet offerings. Afterward, each mother held her baby so that the infant could look either at the researcher or at another female stranger. If calm infants encountered a researcher who avoided making eye contact, they didn't gravitate grav·i·tate intr.v. grav·i·tat·ed, grav·i·tat·ing, grav·i·tates 1. To move in response to the force of gravity. 2. To move downward. 3. to that person's face later on, even if the initial trial had included a sweet inducement. Most of these babies cried if they received a sweetened sweet·en v. sweet·ened, sweet·en·ing, sweet·ens v.tr. 1. To make sweet or sweeter by adding sugar, honey, saccharin, or another sweet substance. 2. To make more pleasant or agreeable. solution or pacifier without eye contact, the scientists note. If a researcher avoided eye contact and offered no sweets, infants repeatedly smiled, gurgled, and otherwise tried to capture her attention. Given positive stimulation from others, which in real-life situations includes caressing and suckling suckling In mammals, the drawing of milk into the mouth from the nipple of a mammary gland. In human beings, it is referred to as nursing or breast-feeding. The word also denotes an animal that has not yet been weaned—that is, whose access to milk has not yet been , babies first learn to recognize eyes and their surrounding facial features, the scientists theorize the·o·rize v. the·o·rized, the·o·riz·ing, the·o·riz·es v.intr. To formulate theories or a theory; speculate. v.tr. To propose a theory about. . --B.B. |
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