2024-07-18 10:31:16
(ANSA) – ROME, JULY 18 – Newborns use their mother’s smell to help them recognize their mother’s face: this is revealed by a French study by the Université de Bourgogne, Université de Lyon, Institut Universitaire de France, Université de Lorraine, Centre Hospitalier de Nancy, and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) published in the journal Child Development.
In previous studies, experts have shown that infants’ rapid perception of faces, highly relevant visual inputs, is shaped by other sensory cues. In this study, experts expanded on their finding that mothers’ body odor helps infants recognize their mothers’ faces at 4 months. They also showed that this olfactory-visual facilitation gradually decreases as infants grow older and become more efficient at perceiving faces through their eyes alone. We tested 50 infants aged 4 to 12 months and found that the selective neural response to faces (measured with an electroencephalogram) increases and becomes more complex between 4 and 12 months, indicating improved perception of faces with development. As expected, we also found that the benefit of adding mothers’ body odor decreases with age. (ANSA).
2024-07-18 10:31:16