Description
How infants perceive and respond to visual aesthetic stimuli is little understood. Addressing this question is important, both to understand the developmental origins of aesthetic experience, and to identify how babies can engage with and experience the positive benefits of the Arts. Here, we present a series of studies which record infant eye-movements to colours, art, books, buildings, natural scenes and abstract patterns, and which relate infant looking to adults’ aesthetic responses to those stimuli. We find that from 3-months-old, infants look longer at colours, art, buildings and fractal patterns the more aesthetically positive those stimuli are for adults. Contrary to this, we also find a negative relationship between infant looking and adult preference for images from baby books and for natural scenes, highlighting that infants don’t always look longer at stimuli that adults like. We present analyses which identify the low-level visual statistical properties of the stimuli which predict infant looking and adult aesthetics. We propose that the Goldilocks principle, which argues that infants look longest at the level of complexity that is ‘just right’ for their perceptual ability, can account for infants’ response. In addition to our empirical research, we also present a series of case studies where we have applied our findings to inform the design of aesthetic experiences for infants. We outline how our research has informed the design of three professional drama performances for babies, baby books, and other baby products (e.g., patterns for buggies and sensory cards), and explain how the research has been used to curate a Baby Art Gallery. Finally, we identify key questions for future research on infant visual aesthetics.
| Names, affilations and contact information | Anna Franklin, The Sussex Colour Group & Baby Lab, University of Sussex, anna.franklin@sussex.ac.uk; Philip McAdams, Indiana Univeristy Bloomington, p.mcadams@sussex.ac.uk; Katherine Alexandra Symons, The Sussex Baby Lab and Nature and Development Lab, University of Sussex, ks779@sussex.ac.uk; Taysa-Ja Newman, The Sussex Baby Lab, University of Sussex, tn284@sussex.ac.uk; Alice Skelton, The Sussex Baby Lab and Nature and Development Lab, University of Sussex, A.E.Skelton@sussex.ac.uk |
|---|---|
| Bio | Professor Anna Franklin is a developmental and visual psychologist who leads the Sussex Colour Group and co-leads the Sussex Baby Lab at the University of Sussex. Dr. Philip McAdams conducted his PhD with the Sussex Baby Lab and is now a post-doctoral researcher at the Cognitive and Visual Development Labs at Indiana University. Katherine Symons is an artist and doctoral researcher at the Sussex Baby Lab and her PhD is investigating developmental aesthetics. Taysa-Ja Newman has been a research assistant in the Sussex Baby Lab for several years and is just starting a PhD in the Nature and Development Lab at the University of Sussex. Dr Alice Skelton co-leads the Sussex Baby Lab and leads the Nature and Development lab at the University of Sussex. |