Ecological influences and visual attention to infant phenotypes

In humans, the allocation of resources, such as parental care and attention, is vital to offspring survival. Life history strategies are influenced by cues in the environment, particularly those that signal the availability of resources. What has yet to be determined is how individuals allocate resources to infants as a function of perceived ecological harshness and life history strategy. In the current research we hypothesized that perceived ecology would influence infant ratings (Study 1), and that visual attention to infant phenotypes would be associated with life history strategies (Study 2). Study 1 investigated the effect of ecological conditions (control vs. harsh) on preferences to infant phenotypes (i.e., underweight, average weight, overweight). Participants (N = 246) were less likely to rate infants favorably under a harsh ecological condition. Study 2 investigated visual perception in processing infant images. Using an eye-tracking task, participants (N = 239) viewed images of infants while their eye movements were recorded. Participants displayed an early attentional bias (i.e., first fixation duration) to the head of the infant and focused most of their visual attention to the torso of infants (i.e., total visit duration). The results of the both studies indicate that ecological factors play an important role in rating infants, and data from eye-tracking demonstrates that phenotypes influence the amount of attention given to infants.