A Behavior Study on the Effect of Baby Schema on Face Discrimination for Robot Appearance Design

With the advent of the era of artificial intelligence, more and more robots appear in daily life. To better meet the aesthetic needs of the public, the appearance design of the robot becomes particularly important. Some researchers suggested that human beings have the instinct to protect their offspring, which makes adults usually think of infants as more attractive and likable as adults. In addition, Lorentz et al. put forward baby schema (or Kindchenschema) which summed up the special features of the infants' face and suggested that it may be the reason why infants are different from adults to make people think that infants are cuter. However, it is not clear whether adults will have behavioral special reactions when observing the infants' faces, and it is not known whether the special response is due to changes in the baby schema. In this study, we explore the response time to recognize the faces of adults or infants with different levels of baby schema in the spatial cueing paradigm. The results demonstrate that adults can react quickly to infants, even they not with high baby schema parameters. This conclusion gives us a new idea of the different reactions of adults to infants. And it can also provide theoretical support for improving robot appearance design.