Do infants have a sense of beauty? A study using kinetic dot displays

Abstract

The present study investigated the emergence of a visual preference for beautiful kinetic dot displays during development. The displays were previously judged for relative beauty by an independent group of adults. Preferential looking was measured with an eye tracker in 4- to 24-month-old infants and adults. Analysis of the overall preferential looking response over the 5 s of stimulus display indicated that adults’ judgement predicted preferential looking at all ages tested. Analysis of the time course of this attentional response indicated two different mechanisms: (i) a fast-orienting response towards motion patterns that were not judged as beautiful by adults, and (ii) a slower but longer-duration response towards motion patterns that were judged as beautiful by adults. The contribution of these two mechanisms to the overall preferential looking response changed with age in a consistent manner. Because the beauty ratings of adults were associated with a later but longer-duration visual attention response in infants, and most preferred patterns differed in many aspects from non-preferred patterns, we propose that a sense of beauty, defined in adults as a pleasurable mental state leading to sustained visual attention, may influence behaviour by four months of age when looking at kinetic dot displays.