Perceptual factors affecting the ability to assess facialresemblance between parents and newborns in humans

摘要

People undeniably pay attention to faces, and facial resemblance may act as a kinshipcue. However, previous studies have shown that the ability to detect kinship through facial resem-blance is limited, and it has been suggested that this may be due to several types of perceptualfactors. To further understand the processes that underpin kinship judgment, it is important toinvestigate which perceptual factors predict the probability of parent –child pairs being detectedas related. To this end, we performed two experiments. In the first, we evaluated the ability ofhuman observers to match newborns with one of their parents. In the second, we explored threeperceptual factors that may have influenced kinship detection (gender discrimination, facialattractiveness, and perceptual similarity). Results showed that the participants were able to matchnewborns with one of their parents, even though the task was perceived as difficult. Moreover,our study goes further than previous findings, showing that the perceptual factors investigatedmay significantly contribute to kinship detection.