导读：小婴儿总是可爱得让人无法抗拒，让人想保护。但是，据台湾《联合报》3月31日报道，一项科学研究指出，儿童4岁半时脸部结构会发生变化，让人感觉不再那么可爱。
小婴儿总是可爱得让人无法抗拒。但是，据台湾《联合报》3月31日报道，一项科学研究指出，儿童4岁半时脸部结构会发生变化，让人感觉不再那么可爱。
加拿大多伦多大学与3名中国心理学家招募60名男女，让他们看婴儿时期到6岁半的孩童照片，再依据他们对婴儿脸部的喜好程度及婴儿脸部对他们的吸引力评分。结果发现，人们普遍认为小孩过了4岁半便不再那么可爱。
研究人员表示，婴儿的脸部结构会在4岁半的关键时期发生变化。从人类演化观点来看，孩童在这个时期脸蛋失去儿时的稚气，是因为不再需要靠这些因素存活。日前在Journal of Experimental Child Psychology发表研究报告的珍娜-品考特亦表示，婴儿的脸部特征让人觉得柔软、让人想保护，提高了婴儿存活的可能性。
Are children’s faces really more appealing than those of adults? Testing the baby schema hypothesis beyond infancy
Li Zhu, Luo Hong Li, Kang Lee
This study examined adults’ evaluations of likeability and attractiveness of children’s faces from infancy to early childhood. We tested whether Lorenz’s baby schema hypothesis (Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie (1943), Vol. 5, pp. 235–409) is applicable not only to infant faces but also to faces of children at older ages. Adult participants were asked to evaluate children’s faces from early infancy to 6 years of age in terms of their likeability and attractiveness, and these judgments were compared with those of adult faces. It was revealed that adults judged faces of younger children as more likeable and attractive than faces of older children, which were in turn judged as more likeable and attractive than adult faces. However, after approximately 4.5 years of age, the baby schema no longer affected adults’ judgments of children’s facial likeability and attractiveness. These findings suggest that the baby schema affects adults’ judgments of not only infant faces but also young children’s faces. This influence beyond infancy is likely due to the fact that facial cranial growth is gradual during early childhood and certain crucial infantile facial cues remain readily available during this period. Future studies need to identify these specific cues to better understand why adults generally show positive responses to infantile faces and how such positive responses influence the establishment and maintenance of social relationships between young children and adults.
文献链接：https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002209651100107X
