Development of preferences for the human body shape in infancy

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 30, 2026

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm
06:07

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Virginia Slaughter1, Michelle Heron, Susan Sim

  • 1School of Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, 4072, Australia. vps@psy.uq.edu.au

Cognition
|August 10, 2002
PubMed

Insights

Infants aged 18 months, but not younger, preferred scrambled human body shapes over typical ones. This suggests distinct developmental paths for face and body recognition in babies.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science
  • Human Perception

Background:

  • Infants exhibit early visual preferences for human faces.
  • Understanding of the human body shape develops later in infancy.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the developmental trajectory of infants' visual preferences for human body shapes.
  • To compare the development of body shape recognition with face recognition.

Main Methods:

  • Two preferential looking experiments were conducted with infants aged 12, 15, and 18 months.
  • Stimuli included paired line drawings and photographic images of typical and scrambled human body shapes.

Main Results:

  • Only 18-month-old infants showed a reliable preference for scrambled body shapes over typical body shapes.
  • Younger infants (12 and 15 months) did not display differential visual preferences for body shapes.
  • This contrasts with the established early preference for human faces.

Conclusions:

  • Infants' visual processing of body shapes follows a different developmental timeline compared to faces.
  • The ability to discern typical human body configurations emerges later in the second year of life.

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