Visual Preference for Socially Relevant Spatial Relations in Humans and Monkeys
研究发现人类成人和幼年猕猴都自发偏好观看面对面（而非背对背）的两人场景，这种偏好最早在5岁儿童中出现，表明对第三方社交互动的视觉偏好是社会认知发展的新里程碑。
As a powerful social signal, a body, face, or gaze facing toward oneself holds an individual’s attention. We asked whether, going beyond an egocentric stance, facingness between others has a similar effect and why. In a preferential-looking time paradigm, human adults showed spontaneous preference to look at two bodies facing toward (vs. away from) each other (Experiment 1a, N = 24). Moreover, facing dyads were rated higher on social semantic dimensions, showing that facingness adds social value to stimuli (Experiment 1b, N = 138). The same visual preference was found in juvenile macaque monkeys (Experiment 2, N = 21). Finally, on the human development timescale, this preference emerged by 5 years, although young infants by 7 months of age already discriminate visual scenes on the basis of body positioning (Experiment 3, N = 120). We discuss how the preference for facing dyads—shared by human adults, young children, and macaques—can signal a new milestone in social cognition development, supporting processing and learning from third-party social interactions.