title: The relationship between facial 3-D morphometry and the perception of attractiveness in children.
abstract: The aim of this investigation was to determine whether attractive children differ in their three-dimensional facial characteristics from nonattractive children of the same age, race, and sex. The facial characteristics of 36 boys and 44 girls aged 8 to 9 years were investigated. Frontal and profile photographs were analyzed independently by 21 judges, and, for each view, four groups were obtained: attractive boys, nonattractive boys, attractive girls, and nonattractive girls. For each child, the three-dimensional coordinates of 16 standardized soft tissue facial landmarks were automatically collected using an infrared system and used to calculate several three-dimensional angles, linear distances, and linear distance ratios. Mean values were computed in the eight groups, and attractive and nonattractive children were compared within sex and view. Most children received a different esthetic evaluation in the separate frontal and profile assessments; concordance in both attractive and nonattractive groups was only 50%. Moreover, three-dimensional facial morphometry was not able to separate attractive and nonattractive children.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of the Functional Anatomy of the Stomatognathic Apparatus, University of Milan, Faculty of Medicine, Italy.
authors.forename: V F
authors.initials: VF
authors.lastname: Ferrario
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sforza
authors.forename: C E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Poggio
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Colombo
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tartaglia
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001504:Beauty; D002648:Child; D005145:Face / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010465:Perception; D010781:Photography; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013223:Statistics as Topic