Infant Vision and Aesthetic Feeling of Face and Planar Artwork

7/28/2019 Infant Vision and Aesthetic Feeling of Face and Planar Artwork

1/12

This paper has been published in the journal of Heilongjiang University in two parts respectively

Infant vision and aesthetic feeling of face in the third issue in 1993 andInfant vision and aesthetic

feeling of planar artwork in the second issue in 1994 (see the pictures attached at the end of this

paper). The intimate relationship between the visual characteristics and aesthetic psychology of

infants before their stereoscopic vision develops is the root cause for their aesthetic feeling of

faces and plane artwork.

Infant Vision and Aesthetic Feeling of Face and Planar

Artwork

[China] Chen Fei

Infant vision and aesthetic feeling of face

Firstly, I would like to explain what the most beautiful faces are: 1,

all parts on such faces are in normal proportion; 2, the faces that are

closest to the "mask" that I am going to describe. Therefore, the simplest

and most generalized faces are the most beautiful ones. It is difficult to

find out a beauty's facial features, while it is easy to point out the ugliness

of an ugly person immediately. You may regard a woman coming toward

you from a distance as a beauty, but you may think she is less beautiful

when you approach her, because you see the small wrinkles on her face.

The face does not indicate the easiest organization, which mar her beauty.

A girl may immediately look at herself in the mirror and has the

following questions: "I have silky skin and well-defined features without

distinguishing characteristics as well, but why am I not beautiful?" This is


2/12

because, comparatively speaking, there is a large gap between her face

and the "mask" in the "terrain"the shape of facial muscles (gentle

rolling tendency). There are special requirements for the terrain of a

"mask".

Then, how does the aesthetic feeling of face form or how does a

"mask" photograph itself on people's minds? What is the feature of a

"mask"? All these should be traced back to a conditioned reflex which has

been established in infancy.

In order to discover how infants recognize their mother, some

psychologists carried out a series of experiments on the newborns in the

Addenbrookes Hospital. They drilled 3 holes in a plat board which was

similar to a human face in size and shape at the locations equivalent to the

eyes and nose. They found that the several-hour-old newborns

particularly liked to follow such patternwhich is called the "mask" in

this paperand the "mask" was less attractive to the 3-month-old babies;

the 5-month-old infants didn't care about the facial shape or profile, and

they were only interested in the patterns of the eyes, nose and mouth.

The results of these experiments showed that infants initially cannot

distinguish between a mask, even the simplest one, and a real face, that is,

a real face makes the same impression as an oval with three holes for

infants. It is only when an infant is born after a few months that it begins

to study the characteristics of a human face (its mother's face firstly) and

thereby distinguish a different person.

An infant is happy when it is in its mother's armsI will point out


3/12

that this is a special kind of happinessin the meantime, the mask that

the infant notes is the face of the hugger. Because the happiness always

appears with a mask, the mask has established a happy conditioned reflex.

Such a conditioned reflex, which is established in the infancy, is

permanent and will never fade. For this reason, people will feel

particularly happy when he sees a face similar to the "mask" as they grow

up. It can be described with language: "What a beautiful face!" or "How

cute the face is!"

What are the characteristics of a "mask"? It can be regarded as a

face-shaped outline with three dots. There are no other characteristics.

The triangle area consisted of the area surrounding the eyes as well as the

3 dots, and any other places are blank regions without any other structural

features. The facial muscles locate in the area equivalent to the pure and

unblemished area in the mask. Each persons facial muscles are different

in form, but an infant cannot realize the difference, because its visual

perception does not have three-dimensional effect. Therefore, the closer

his facial muscle shape is to the mask construction in an infant's eyes, the

more beautiful he is. The slightest difference in muscle undulation,

unevenness, un-smoothness, pockmarks, or scars will break the simple

"pureness" and make the face more complicated, and, to varying degrees,

mar the beauty.

When a mother cuddles and faces an infant, the infant will notice

that there are three moving points in its mother's face: of which two

points are located in the upper part side by side (eyes) and one down at


4/12

the center (mouth); the infant pays its particular attention to the two upper

points, because the eyes always follow it. In addition, infants extremely

notice the triangle area consisting of the three moving points; relatively

speaking, they pay less attention to the part outside the triangle area. They

will observe people's faces in this way when they grow up. Therefore, the

sections in a face affect the aesthetic feeling in different degrees: eyes and

the surrounding area are the most important part, the triangle area

consisting of eyes and mouth take the second place, and then followed by

other sections include the face shape.

If a mother's nose is longer than the average person, will her baby

receive this feature and like a person with a long nose when it grows up?

Experience has proved that this will not happen, because an infant less

than six months old cannot see facial details.

The psychological occurrence of facial aesthetic feeling can support

Freud's theory of "oral stage": if the sexual psychological feelings are

different with an infant's feeling when it is in her mother's arms, why will

people fall in love as soon as they see a beautiful face, that is, the "mask"

that stimulated them in their early years? An infant's happiness is a sexual

sense and one of the most intense experiences of love.

Infant vision and aesthetic feeling of planar artwork

An infant cannot distinguish between a true face with clearly

demarcated layers and a "mask" on a flat surface, so we can assume that

it is a planar world in the vision of an infant. Its stereoscopic vision will


5/12

not be established until it is about six months old. This assumption is

based on the fact that an infant less than 6 months old smiles to very face,

but it shows fear response to the unfamiliar faces when it is eight months

old. The former case indicates that what an infant sees is a "mask", all

the faces are the same; the latter, in contrast, indicates that it is able to

distinguish a real face, that is, it can see facial details.

We will never have the perception of the size, shape, spacing, pitch,

etc. of various objects same as their projection on the retina; and we will

not see the parallel lines as ever parallel or the right angles as ever 90,

and we will never see an unlimitedly far-reaching space.

The space in the vision of mankind is a cone-shaped one, the farther

the location of an object is, the smaller it will be, and it forms a cone top

at the end of the sight. For example, when standing in a street, you will

see the two edge lines go together forward a point. This cone-shaped

space is between the above two extremes. The spatial feature in an

infant's vision is closer to the planar side than that of an adultit is

almost the copy of a painting. The relationship between them is shown in

Figure I. Of course, we cannot know the extent to which the infant vision

is close to the planar status, and the position in the figure is assumed for

the convenience of explanation.

The fundamentals of the formal aesthetic feeling of paintings and all

other types of planar artworks are the planar-stereoscopic feature of the

form. The closer the artworks are to the visual characteristics of an infant

before its stereoscopic vision establishes the more aesthetic they will be.


6/12

For example, in the aesthetic feeling of face, the aesthetic effects will be

greatly influenced by even a minor difference.

The painting base's resistance to the third dimension tendency of a

form will confine the planar-stereoscopic features of the form to a

specific extent. In this extent, there may be some subtle differences

between the planar-stereoscopic features of different paintings or different

parts of a painting, which are the cause for the reality that some paintings

or some parts of a painting have more formal aesthetic feeling than other

paintings or other parts.

A painting with rich formal aesthetic feeling will lead us into the

initial state in which we are integrated with our mother, making us

intoxicated, enraptured and filling our heart with awe. But when an infant

grows up, he experiences more and more psychological setbacks such as

separation and loss, and at that time, with the development of his

consciousness and perception, what he faces is a three-dimensional world,

and thus he loses the beautiful planar paradise forever.

It should be noted that the planar-stereoscopic features of the infant

vision is not fixed but gradually developing and changing, and such

change is likely to be in the form of acceleration. It changes in a weak

and slow manner in the great part of the changing process and it changes

faster and faster in the short end period. It is the spatial characteristic in

the relatively static stage before the rapidly changing stage that is the best

able to cause the pleasant reflex, because it has experienced the longest

strengthening.


7/12

The reason why we consider a foggy scenery beautiful is because the

blurred visual information has less three-dimensional effect; a distant

scenery seems more beautiful, because the dual-visual difference

functions within only 500 meters, and the further objects become more

plane. Such a phenomenon become more obvious on cloudy days or in

the early morning when the light is less strong; looking out of a window

via a small grid, we will find out the three-dimensional effect of the

landscape is weakened, and they seem to be combined with the window

frame, this is because the relationship of the proportion and distance of

the landscape indoor and outdoor is cut across by the wall. The distant

outdoor scenery out of the window frame on cloudy days can be perfectly

regarded as a painting.

Those art forms attached to the planar base, such as painting and

photography, are usually very beautiful, because the painting base's

planarity has strong resistance to the third dimension tendency of the

graphs themselves, and the three-dimensional effect is greatly weakened.

Estheticians always have no idea on the beauty of a painting or a

scenic snapshot although they have viewed it for a long time. In fact the

aesthetic feeling is nothing but a conditioned reflex. They have

considered a variety of factors, but simply ignored the most basic nature

of a planar artwork: planarity. In some cases, we may consider the

scenery in a snapshot as beautiful, but we will find it is nothing special

and feel disappointed when visiting it.


8/12

Illustrations:

Note: See Science Illustrated, the 11th Issue of 1988, Shanghai scientific & Technical

Publishers

Chen Zhonggeng & Zhang Bingxin: Personality Psychology, Chapter 12, Liaoning

People's Publishing House.

(Author affiliation: Hunan Taosheng Network Technology Co., Ltd, E-mail of the author:

[email protected])

Figure 1:

Left: An infant half an hour after being born started to pay attention a picture similar to a face

Right: when an infant grows a bit older, it is increasingly intrigued by a picture with facial features

See Science Illustrated, the11th issue of 1988, Shanghai scientific & Technical Publishers


9/12

Figure 2:

Left: a participant was asked to stare at a photo of a girl for 3 minutes, and at the same time his

sight was recorded by an instrument.

Right: the result showed that his sight focused on her eyes and mouth

SeeReader's Digest, 12th Issue of 1984, P. 37

Figure 3: (Pictures of the author's published paper)


10/12

Cover of the 3rd issue in 1993

Contents of the 3rd issue in 1993


11/12

Text in the 3rd issue in 1993

Cover of the 2nd issue in 1994


12/12

Contents of the 2nd issue in 1994

Text in the 2nd issue in 1994

Infant Vision and Aesthetic Feeling of Face and Planar Artwork

Documents

Transcript of Infant Vision and Aesthetic Feeling of Face and Planar Artwork