Face preference at birth: the role of an orienting mechanism

It has been proposed that newborns' preferential orienting to faces is solely controlled by a subcortically mediated orienting mechanism (i.e., Conspec). In contrast preferential-looking tasks show that face preference at birth manifests itself also with measures that index fixation duration. It is possible, however, that orienting and fixation duration are confounded and only orienting matters. The present study used a revised version of the preferential-looking technique, in which the same stimulus (i.e., a facelike or a nonfacelike pattern) was simultaneously presented to both sides of the visual field. Results showed that longer total fixation times on the facelike stimuli resulted from the sum of a greater number of brief fixations, rather than from the sum of a small number of long fixations. These findings support the hypothesis that, for facelike patterns, the duration of infant's fixation on the stimulus is determined by the nature of the pattern that impinges on the periphery of the visual field, more than by the nature of the pattern that is being looked at.