Children preferences for Infant Facial Features in Pet Dogs and Cats.

The same mechanisms through which humans become attracted to infants of their own species appear involved in human’s attraction and interest towards other species, particularly those which have retained infant features into adulthood, such dogs and some breeds of pet cats (neotenic features). A very recent study (Archer and Monton 2011) has shown the attractiveness of infant features in the faces of dogs, cats, teddy bears and human infants, as rated by adult women and men. We used this same set of pictures to assess children’s preferences for human infants, adult/infant dogs and cats and for teddy bears. Children (n=285) aged 3 to 6 years participated in the study and were tested on different tasks based on the ‘sorting by preference’ approach, using paired pictorial stimuli. Children preferences for infant/non infant features and for different species (dogs vs cats) were obtain and the effects of gender, age, presence of animals at home and parents’ attitudes toward animals on such preferences analyzed. Results show how factors such as gender, age and familiarity with an animal species are able to influence children’s attitudes towards animals from a very early stage of development. Little attention has been paid so far to the factors underlying children preferences towards animals. The identification of animal features that can attract and engage children appears particularly important since this information could be used to promote positive emotions in animal-based children education and in Animal-Assisted Intervention programs.