Infant sense of beauty

Eye‑tracking shows 4‑month‑old babies look longer at kinetic dot displays adults judge as beautiful, implying a rudimentary aesthetic preference emerges very early. The effect manifests as a slower, longer‑duration attention to 'beautiful' patterns versus a fast orienting to non‑preferred motion, and it persists across the 4–24 month age range tested. — If some aesthetic preferences are present in infancy, debates about the origins of taste, art education, and cultural formation must reckon with a biological starting point as well as cultural shaping.