A Facial Dimension in Visual Discrimination by Human Infants

4 visual stimuli were presented to 36 4-month-old males. In these patterns, degrees of resemblance to the human face and stimulus complexity varied independently. Fixation time to each was recorded in a paired-comparisons presentation. The results evidenced a transitive response ordering concomitant with the degree of faceness. This finding indicated that the infants were able to respond to the perceptual dimension of resemblance to the face and that response to the face was not accounted for by stimulus complexity.