The Development of the Uncanny Valley in Infants

By David J. Lewkowicz, Asif A. Ghazanfar. 2011

82 citations recorded by the source corpus.

When adults view very realistic humanoid robots or computer avatars they often exhibit an aversion to them. This phenomenon, known as the “uncanny valley”, is assumed to be evolutionary in origin, perhaps tapping into modules for disgust or attractiveness that detect violations of our normal expectations regarding social signals. Here, we test an alternative hypothesis that the uncanny valley is developmental in origin and, thus, that specific early experience with real human faces leads to its eventual emergence. To test this idea, we measured visual preferences in response to all possible pairs of a human face, realistic avatar face, and an unrealistic avatar face in groups of 6-, 8-, 10-, and 12-month-old infants. Consistent with the developmental hypothesis, we found that the uncanny valley effect emerges at 12 months of age suggesting that perceptual experience with real human faces is critical to its emergence.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Early Experience & Multisensory Perceptual Narrowing (2014, background): “…that selective experience with human faces tunes the visual system to prototypical face attributes; whereas 6-month-old infants prefer faces with atypically large eyes over faces with typically sized eyes, 12- month-old infants prefer faces with typically sized eyes (Lewkowicz & Ghazanfar, 2012).”
Individual differences predict sensitivity to the uncanny valley (2015, background): “Although cultural and other learned constructions may amplify or attenuate the uncanny valley, evidence from studies with infants and primates indicate the phenomenon is also rooted in more specific biological adaptations (Lewkowicz & Ghazanfar, 2012; Steckenfinger & Ghazanfar, 2009).”
The Uncanny Valley: Existence and Explanations (2015, background): “Finally, an infant study showed that by 12 months, infants looked longer at human or avatar faces than at the same avatar faces that were combined with uncanny features, such as disproportionately large eyes (Lewkowicz & Ghazanfar, 2012).”