title: Face adaptation and attractiveness aftereffects in 8-year-olds and adults.
abstract: A novel method was used to investigate developmental changes in face processing: attractiveness aftereffects. Consistent with the norm-based coding model, viewing consistently distorted faces shifts adults' attractiveness preferences toward the adapting stimuli. Thus, adults' attractiveness judgments are influenced by a continuously updated face prototype. To investigate the development of this process, a novel method was developed for 8-year-olds. After reading a storybook composed of faces with either compressed or expanded features, 8-year-olds' ratings of faces distorted in the direction of the adapting stimuli increased. Nonetheless, they required larger distortions than adults to rate undistorted faces as most attractive preadaptation. Thus, although 8-year-olds' attractiveness preferences are influenced by a continuously updated prototype, their face space is less refined than that of adults.
authors.affiliation: University of Toronto, Canada.
authors.forename: Gizelle
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Anzures
authors.forename: Catherine J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Mondloch
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Lackner
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001504:Beauty; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005366:Figural Aftereffect; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D011214:Practice, Psychological