We are delighted to inform you that Prof. Sarah Jessen will speak at our online BRC Colloquium on February 3d.
How does social odor impact face processing in the first year of life?
Infants are born into a social world and rapidly learn to respond to others’ signals, enabling them to become more and more active participants of social interactions. While extensive research has examined the role visual and auditory cues, in particular faces and voices, play in early social development, other sensory modalities have received far less attention. Notably, little is known about the contribution of olfactory cues as a source of social information during the first year of life. In this talk, I will address this gap by presenting recent research on the influence of parental odor, particularly maternal odor, on infants’ processing of faces and facial information. I will discuss its potential effects on emotion processing, compare the roles of maternal and paternal odor, and discuss developmental changes across the first year of life and the unique contribution of olfactory cues relative to other social modalities such as voice and touch.