CHILDHOOD HEALTH AND FACIAL MARKERS OF DEVELOPMENTAL INSTABILITY

Summary:

Facial scan data on the ALSPAC cohort has been collected by Prof Richmond and his team at Cardiff University. We seek permission to analyse this data to produce hypothesised markers of development instability (e.g. facial symmetry, see below) and to link this data with childood health data already obtained by Dr Lawson under an existing project (Project B number: B227 - e,g, Lawson and Mace 2008, 2009).

Background:

Small random deviations from perfect symmetry in normally bilateral traits are referred to as fluctuating asymmetry (FA). Low levels of FA are believed to be an indicator of developmental stability (Van Valen, 1962) ? an organism's ability to buffer against stressors such as pathogens, toxins, and mutations (Moller & Swaddle, 1997; Polak, 2003). Across taxa higher FA is associated with greater morbidity, reduced fecundity, and higher mortality and in humans symmetry is associated with attractiveness. For example, bodily FA is negatively associated with face (Gangestad, Thornhill & Yeo, 1994), voice (Hughes, Harrison & Gallup, 2002), and odour attractiveness (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999).

Although considerable research effort has addressed the consequences of both bodily and facial symmetry on various outcomes (such as intelligence, personality and attractiveness; Penton-Voak et al, 2001; Pound et al, 2007), the basic assumption of this work -effectively, that symmetry reflects good developmental health - remains untested formally. The ALSPAC sample provides both health data and facial scans from which symmetry measures can be obtained, allowing a rigourous test of this relationship between health and asymmetry.

Hypotheses to be tested:

By investigating the associations between a putative marker of developmental instability (facial asymmetry determined from the 3D facial scans using a landmark based morphometric technique ) and childhood health indices (from Dr. Lawson's previous work), we aim to test the hypothesis that asymmetry results from challenges to health during development