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Published on: April 19, 2017
Congruency as a nonspecific perceptual property contributing to newborns' face preference
Viola Macchi Cassia1, Eloisa Valenza, Francesca Simion
1Department of Psychology, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milano, Italy. viola.macchicassia@unimib.it
Abstract:
Past research has shown that top-heaviness is a perceptual property that plays a crucial role in triggering newborns' preference toward faces. The present study examined the contribution of a second configural property, congruency, to newborns' face preference. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when embedded in nonfacelike stimuli, congruency induces a preference of the same strength as that induced by facedness. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that the attentional biases toward facedness and congruency produce a cumulative effect on newborns' visual preferences according to an additive model. These findings were extended by those of Experiment 5, showing that the additive model holds true when congruency is added to top-heaviness in nonfacelike stimuli displaying more elements in the upper portion.
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