The Power of Puppies: Looking at Cute Images Can Improve Focus 小狗的力量——看可爱的图像可以提高注意力

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“Cute” pictures of baby animals， including puppies and kittens， can have powerful effects on people’s attention and concentration， psychological scientists at Hiroshima University in Japan have found. Led by researcher Hiroshi Nittono， the team conducted three experiments with 132 university students and concluded that cute images may help improve performance on detail-oriented tasks that require concentration.

Research has long shown that people are more likely to respond to “cute” baby-like features—a large head， a high big forehead， and large eyes—known as the “baby schema”. Baby animals also have baby schema characteristics， which helps explain why we think puppies and kittens are cuter than dogs and cats.

The baby schema can activate a number of inborn processes in people， including smiling and positive affect and other nurturing behavior， but the research suggests that cute images may also have an impact on attention and perception.

In the first experiment from Nittono’s team， a group of 48 college students were asked to play a game. The students used tweezers to remove tiny plastic body parts from holes in the body of a “patient” without touching the sides of the holes. After playing one round of the game， half of the students looked at a series of seven images of cute puppies and kittens while the others viewed pictures of adult dogs and cats.

日本广岛大学的心理学家发现，诸如小猫、小狗之类的小动物的“可爱”照片可以对人们的注意力和专注力产生显著的影响。（剩余2047字）