Ever wondered how babies view the world? An intriguing study published on Thursday revealed that infants between the ages of four and 12 months use their mother's scent to recognize faces. According to the research published in the Child Development journal, babies benefit significantly from their mother's smell, and their ability to perceive faces improves considerably within this age range.
Moreover, researchers from the Universite de Bourgogne and University of Hamburg in France indicate that older infants can effectively recognize faces using only visual information and no longer require additional concurrent cues.
The study aimed to determine if the assistance provided by the sense of smell to visual perception gradually diminishes as infants age and become more adept at recognizing faces using only visual cues.
To understand, the team tested 50 infants aged between 4 and 12 months. They discovered that the face-selective EEG response becomes stronger and more complex over this period, suggesting that face perception improves as infants develop.
"As expected, we also found that the benefit of adding the mother's body odour diminishes with age, confirming an inverse relation between the effectiveness of visual perception and its sensitivity to a concurrent odour," said Dr Arnaud Leleu, Associate Professor of psychology and neuroscience from the Universite de Bourgogne in Dijon, France.
Overall, the researcher stated that this demonstrates how visual perception in developing infants actively depends on odour cues until their visual system becomes independently effective.
Dr. Leleu emphasized that the findings highlight the significance of early exposure to simultaneous sensory inputs from various modalities for perceptual learning. This exposure may contribute to the development of advanced abilities, including semantic memory, language, and conceptual reasoning.
(with IANS inputs)
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