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Babies may share adults' sense of beauty, and it appears to sharpen with age

Phys · · 932 words · By Ingrid Fadelli

Researchers at Université Grenoble Alpes conducted a study using kinetic dot displays to determine if infants share a sense of beauty with adults. The findings suggest that infants as young as 4 months show visual preferences for patterns adults judge as beautiful, and this preference strengthens as they age.

open_in_new Read the original article: https://phys.org/news/2026-05-babies-adults-beauty-sharpen-age.html

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0%
Propaganda Score
confidence: 100%
Low risk. This article shows minimal use of propaganda techniques.

fact_checkFact-Check Results

11 claims extracted and verified against multiple sources including cross-references, web search, and Wikipedia.

info Single Source 5
verified Verified 2
help Insufficient Evidence 2
check_circle Corroborated 1
schedule Pending 1
verified
“Researchers at Université Grenoble Alpes recently tried to determine whether infants who are only a few months old also experience a pleasurable mental state while looking at specific things in their surroundings, and if their preferences are aligned with those of adults.”
VERIFIED
Web search results confirm that researchers at Université Grenoble Alpes conducted studies on infants' visual preferences for attractiveness (beauty) as evaluated by adult raters.
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web search NEUTRAL — Université Grenoble Alpes.This study explores the visual preferences of young infants for faces that differ with respect to their perceived attractiveness, as evaluated by adult raters. Black-and-whit…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335789943_The_relat…
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web search NEUTRAL — Whether infants at five months of age look mostly at faces or non-social objects such as cars or mobile phones is largely determined by genes. This has now been demonstrated by researchers at Uppsala …
https://bioengineer.org/genes-influence-whether-infants-pref…
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web search NEUTRAL — Browse 7 Masters at Université Grenoble Alpes. Plus discover fees, scholarships, rankings, student reviews, admissions and more.
https://www.mastersportal.com/universities/578/universit-gre…
info
“The findings of their study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, confirm this hypothesis, suggesting that humans develop a basic sense of beauty in the earliest stages of life and that this sense gradually develops over time.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The provided evidence for this claim consists of generic Study.com links which do not mention the specific study or the journal 'Proceedings of the Royal Society B'. No independent corroboration was found in the provided evidence.
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web search NEUTRAL — Take online courses on Study.com that are fun and engaging. Pass exams to earn real college credit. Research schools and degrees to further your education.
https://study.com/
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web search NEUTRAL — Need a Study.com Account? Simple & engaging videos to help you learn Unlimited access to 88,000+ lessons The lowest-cost way to earn college credit
https://study.com/academy/login.html
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web search NEUTRAL — Use Study.com's college courses to earn transferable college credit, study for exams, and improve your grades. Our self-paced, engaging video lessons in math, science, English, history, and more ...
https://study.com/academy/level/college.html
verified
“We used pairs of kinetic dot display to study the relation between adults' explicit judgment of beauty and visual preference in 4- to 24-month-olds infants”
VERIFIED
Evidence from Steve Stewart-Williams explicitly mentions the use of displays judged for beauty by adults and the measurement of preferential looking in 4- to 24-month-old infants and adults using an eye tracker.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — The displays were previously judged for relative beauty by an independent group of adults. Preferential looking was measured with an eye tracker in 4- to 24-month-old infants and adults.
https://www.stevestewartwilliams.com/p/an-innate-sense-of-be…
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web search NEUTRAL — Researchers found that infants use limited evidence about an individual’s moral actions to form expectations around how they will act.Psychologists at the University of Toronto have found that we begi…
https://www.utoronto.ca/news/infants-make-nuanced-moral-char…
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web search NEUTRAL — Infant's visual preferences for facial traits associated with adult attractiveness judgements: data from eye-tracking.This study explores the visual preferences of young infants for faces that differ …
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Infant-preferences-for…
check_circle
“Several studies have shown that very young infants, even newborns, can show visual preferences for curved and symmetrical shapes, colors, or faces that are also more liked by adults.”
CORROBORATED
Multiple sources confirm that infants show visual preferences for curved/symmetrical shapes and faces that align with adult preferences.
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web search NEUTRAL — "Several studies have shown that very young infants, even newborns, can show visual preferences for curved and symmetrical shapes, colors, or faces that are also more liked by adults.
https://phys.org/news/2026-05-babies-adults-beauty-sharpen-a…
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web search NEUTRAL — The Nc component associated with infant visual attention is shown at midline central electrode clusters for 9-month-old infants in response to presentations of monkey faces that were either: familiar …
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5835799/
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web search NEUTRAL — Data indicated that infants displayed a significant visual preference for facial symmetry analogous to those preferences displayed by adults. Infants also displayed a significant visual preference for…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01636…
info
“Méary and his colleagues carried out a series of experiments involving both 4 to 24-month-old infants and adults.”
SINGLE SOURCE
The provided evidence for this claim is irrelevant (discussing anime, hindfoot alignment, and undernutrition). No evidence confirms 'Méary and colleagues' in the context of this beauty study.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Check out the animedoro timer website!!: https://animedoro.io/Last semester, I studied 600 hours and watched 300 hours of anime, all while maintaining a 4.0 ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUjGZJIgse0
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web search NEUTRAL — The objective of this study was to compare two methods of angular measurement based on the views of Meary and Saltzman. Methods: Thirty asymptomatic volunteers were included.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29409188/
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web search NEUTRAL — This study aimed to estimate the prevalence of conventional, concurrent and severe forms of anthropometric deficit among infants < 6m attending routine health visits in two Yemeni governorates and to …
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202605.0014
info
“Both the infants and the adult participants were shown pairs of visual dot displays on a screen for five seconds.”
SINGLE SOURCE
While one source mentions infants being shown painting pairs for five seconds, it does not specifically confirm the 'visual dot displays' mentioned in the claim. The dot display detail is not corroborated by the provided evidence.
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web search NEUTRAL — Adults, unlike infants, were also able to use consonant information alone and vowel information alone to match the labels to the shapes, albeit less frequently than the consonant–vowel combination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect
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web search NEUTRAL — Infants were shown the painting pairs for five seconds at a time.Adults received the same test and visual pairings, but were asked to select the image they found most pleasant. The team then compiled …
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/infants-and-adults-pre…
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web search NEUTRAL — To date, few studies have examined the microstructure differences of the visual processing network between SGA and appropriate for gestational age (AGA) infants during early infancy.
https://tp.amegroups.org/article/view/153048/html
info
“Clouds of dots behaving like birds or fishes or expanding swirls were reliably judged more beautiful than other patterns by these adults”
SINGLE SOURCE
The search results for 'dot patterns' are about Rubik's cubes and fashion, not the specific kinetic dot displays used in a psychological study on beauty.
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web search NEUTRAL — Collection of interactive pretty patterns for the Rubik's Cube by Walter Randelshofer.
https://www.randelshofer.ch/rubik/patterns/A200.01.html
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web search NEUTRAL — Subtle Patterns brought to you by Toptal, free textures for your next web project. Find out more here.All entries accepted to Subtle Patterns will be made available for free, licensed under Creative C…
https://www.toptal.com/designers/subtlepatterns/
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web search NEUTRAL — Polka Dots Today. Over many decades, the polka dot pattern remained fashionable and admired, in changing forms and applications. In 1926, Norma Smallwood won the Miss America contest wearing a polka d…
https://www.shutterstock.com/blog/polka-dotspattern-history
info
“The researchers found that infants and adults tended to look at the same dot displays for longer”
SINGLE SOURCE
The evidence discusses general visual perception and attentional engagement in infants, but does not specifically confirm the findings of the dot display study regarding shared preferences between infants and adults.
travel_explore
web search NEUTRAL — Neonatal visual perception. Human infants are born with a functional visual system. The neonate’s eye takes in light and passes it on to higher brain areas, and if awake and alert the baby typically r…
https://www.babylab.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2016…
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web search NEUTRAL — Sustained visual attention in children and adults are considered it is indicated that sustained looking at television or during play reveals attentional processes that have not been apparent in standa…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/224629174_Attention…
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web search NEUTRAL — Orienting involves directing processing resources toward the stimulus. Sustained attention refers to maintaining a state in which stimuli can continue to be processed. Selective attention means that w…
https://faculty.washington.edu/lawerner/sphsc462/attention.p…
help
“this preference built up over time and occurred earlier as the infants grew older”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found for this claim in the provided search results.
help
“The beauty response occurred later than the fast-orienting response toward attention-grabbing properties of the dot display, like a uniform spatial arrangement of the dots.”
INSUFFICIENT EVIDENCE
No evidence was found for this claim in the provided search results.
schedule
“Hélène Mottier et al, Do infants have a sense of beauty? A study using kinetic dot displays, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2026). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2026.0070.”
PENDING
info Disclaimer: This analysis is generated by AI and should be used as a starting point for critical thinking, not as definitive truth. Claims are verified against publicly available sources. Always consult the original article and additional sources for complete context.