Abstract
Regularities in edge orientations aid efficient recognition and categorization of scenes and objects (Geisler, 2001; Perrinet & Bednar, 2015; Sigman et al., 2001). The spatial distribution and relationships of oriented edges (Edge Orientation Entropy, EOE; Redies et al., 2017) also predicts aesthetics, with greater preference for some image types when edges are more evenly distributed across orientations (e.g., Grebenkina et al., 2018). Here, we investigated whether the developing visual system is sensitive to EOE, by measuring infants’ visual preferences for stimuli previously used to identify the relationship between EOE and adult aesthetics (e.g., Grebenkina et al, 2018). Stimuli were greyscale photos of simple and ornamental building facades equalised for luminance. A set of 24 oriented Gabor filters were used to extract the edge orientations and to calculate EOE. Every stimulus was paired with every other stimulus, and each participant saw a random selection of 50 image pairs whilst eye-movements were recorded. Twenty-nine 4-9-month old infants took part, and 29 adults were also asked to look freely at the images. Infants looked significantly longer the greater the EOE, with over half of the variance in infant looking time predicted. Infants and adults both looked longest at images where all edge orientations are about equally likely to occur (high 1st-order EOE), and at images with low correlation of edge orientations across the image (high 2nd-order EOE). Infant looking time explained over half of the variance in adult looking time and adult pleasantness ratings taken from Grebenkina et al. (2018). Our results suggest that even as young as 4-months of age, infants’ spatial vision is sensitive to EOE and is biased to natural scenes where edges are more evenly distributed across orientations. We also tentatively suggest that high EOE is a ‘perceptual primitive’ of aesthetics, at least for some types of stimuli.