![]() ![]() In one study of children, however, the tendency to judge that symmetrical faces are more attractive developed between 5 and 9 years 27. The same effect has been shown for abstract art designs 26. Adults judge more symmetrical faces to be more attractive 22– 25, and the attractiveness of faces is enhanced by symmetrical decorations. Many studies of adults and older children have used explicit judgments to address this issue, and many have focused on the relation between symmetry and facial attractiveness. It is not clear whether this attentional preference has an aesthetic component for infants. reported more efficient recognition of vertically symmetrical patterns by 4-month-old infants, they also found that only 12-month-old infants show an attentional preference for vertical symmetry compared to horizontal symmetry or asymmetry, as indicated by longer looking times 20. Symmetry, in some form, plays a role in many art forms 1– 3 and serves as a basic law in graphic design 21, but its role in guiding the intuitive aesthetic judgments of adults and children is less clear. These studies do not reveal, however, whether infants or adults have an aesthetic preference for symmetrical patterns. At the opposite end of development, 4-month-old human infants take less time to encode visual patterns that are vertically symmetric, relative to asymmetric patterns, providing evidence for early sensitivity to this dimension 20. Electroencephalography (EEG) studies have identified a larger sustained posterior negative potential during viewing of symmetrical patterns compared to random ones 19. With functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), Sasaki and colleagues found that symmetrical visual patterns elicited more activation in the visual cortex 18. ![]() Their attention to such displays appears to be unaffected by learning 16, 17. Adults detect symmetrical visual displays faster and more accurately than asymmetrical displays 8– 12 and remember them better 13– 15. Sensitivity to symmetry has been studied widely in human adults, children and infants with diverse research approaches, from behavioral psychology to neuroscience. Is the preference for symmetry a fundamental, natural and innate principle underlying human aesthetic preferences at all ages? Is it reflected in children’s patterns of attention as well as their explicit judgements? As the physicist Herman Wey wrote in his classic book, “beauty is bound up with symmetry” 7. They influence many aspects of daily life across cultures and historical periods, from purchasing choices 4 to mate selection 5, 6. Symmetry preferences are manifest in diverse aesthetic forms, from painting and sculpture to architecture and music 1– 3. People have a universal aesthetic preference for symmetry. The findings also call into question the assumption, common to many studies of human infants, that attentional choices reflect subjective preferences or values. These findings suggest that the human’s aesthetic preferences have high postnatal plasticity, calling into question theories that symmetry is a “core feature” mediating people’s aesthetic experience throughout life. We found a striking dissociation between these two measures in the children: Children looked longer at the symmetrical patterns, relative to otherwise similar but asymmetrical patterns, but they showed no explicit preference for those patterns. ![]() We assessed four-year-old children’s and adults’ reported aesthetic preferences between symmetrical and asymmetrical visual patterns, as well as their spontaneous attentional preferences between the patterns. Symmetry is a basic geometry property that affects people’s aesthetic experience in common ways across cultures and historical periods, but the origins of the universal preference for symmetrical patterns is not clear. ![]()
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