• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.157-172
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• 2022

Using the adaptation aftereffect paradigm, this study investigated whether adaptation to baby schema features of the face and body could affect facial age perceptions. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to determine whether the test faces that morphed at a certain ratio of a baby face and an adult face were perceived as 'baby' or 'adult' after being adapted to either a baby or an adult face. The result of Experiment 1 showed that after being adapted to baby faces, test faces were assessed as belonging to an adult more often than when being adapted to adult faces. In the subsequent experiments, participants carried out the same facial age judgment task after being adapted to baby or adult body silhouettes (Experiment 2) or hand images (Experiment 3). The results revealed that age perceptions were biased in the direction of the adaptors (i.e., an assimilative aftereffect) after adaptation to body silhouettes (Experiment 2) but did not change after being adapted to hands (Experiment 3). The present study showed that contrastive aftereffects in the perception of facial age were induced by adaptation to the baby face but failed to determine the cross-category transfer of age adaptation from hands or body silhouettes to faces.