Impact of babyface schema on time perception: Insights from neutral and crying facial expressions

Abstract

Facial expressions in infants have been noted to create a spatial attention bias when compared with adult faces. Yet, there is limited understanding of how adults perceive the timing of infant facial expressions. To investigate this, we used both infant and adult facial expressions in a temporal bisection task. In Experiment 1, we compared duration judgments of neutral infant and adult faces. The results revealed that participants felt that neutral infant faces lasted for a shorter time than neutral adult faces, independent of participant sex. Experiment 2 employed sad (crying) facial expressions. Here, the female participants perceived that the infants' faces were displayed for a longer duration than the adults' faces, whereas this distinction was not evident among the male participants. These findings highlight the influence of the babyface schema on time perception, nuanced by emotional context and sex-based individual variances.

Keywords: attention; duration perception; embodiment; infant facial expression; sex difference.

FIGURE 1

Schematic illustration of stimuli presentation in Experiment 1. Each trial began with a fixation cross, followed by a blank screen lasting from 400 to 600 ms. Subsequently, a neutral infant or adult face appeared for one of five varying probe durations. After a blank screen lasting for 500 ms, a question mask was displayed, prompting participants to judge whether the probe duration was closer to the short or the long standard duration.

FIGURE 2

Results of Experiment 1. (A) Mean proportions of “long” responses, respectively for the infant (diamonds) and adult (stars) facial expression conditions, and their associated psychometric curves, from a representative participant. (B) The point of subjective equality (PSEs) and the corresponding standard errors are plotted against the type of expression (infant vs. adult) for female (circles) and male (diamonds) conditions. (C) Mean just‐noticeable difference (JNDs) and the associated standard errors plotted against infant and adult face conditions, for females (circles) and males (diamonds).

FIGURE 3

Results of Experiment 2. (A) The mean proportions of “long” responses are presented for both infant (diamonds) and adult (stars) facial expression conditions, and their associated psychometric curves, obtained from a representative participant. (B) The point of subjective equality (PSEs) and the corresponding standard errors are plotted against the type of expression (infant vs. adult) for female (circles) and male (diamonds) conditions. The two lines cross each other. (C) Mean just‐noticeable difference (JNDs) and the associated standard errors plotted against infant and adult face conditions, for females (circles) and males (diamonds).