Perception of Face in Early Childhood

Vladimír Blažek

Abstract

Newborn babies prefer a face or its scheme over other objects. The innate, so called three-point scheme is generally presupposed for face identification. The development of perception is very fast as demonstrated by more positive reactions to familiar faces, especially to mother´s face. There are several models to describe developments of face identification. Categorization can be considered a basic aspect of the development of cognitive processes. For example, distinguishing gender is not simply given or innate, it originate gradually and differentially: a child learns to recognize mother´s face as a prototype of female face and only from the category of female face can differentiate the category of male face. The ability to distinguish faces of different populations (so called other-race effect) and other facial attributes (attractiveness, mimic expressions etc.) develops in a similar way.

(Fulltext in Czech)

Keywords

early ontogenesis, face perception

Literature

Acerra, F., Burnod, Y., & De Schonen, S. (2002). Modelling aspects of face processing in early infancy. Develop. Sci., 5, 98–117.

Banks, M.S., & Salapatek, P. (1981). Infant pattern vision: a new approach based on the contrast sensitivity function. J. Exp. Child Psych., 31, 1–45.

Bar-Haim, Y., Ziv, T., Lamy, D., & Hodes, R.M. (2006). Nature and Nurture in own-race face processing. Psych. Sci., 17, 159–163.

Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Mindblindness: an essay on autism and theory of mind. MIT Press, Cambridge. – podle: Barrett, L., Dunbar, R., Lycett, J. (2007). Evoluční psychologie člověka. Portál: Praha.

Batki, A., Baron-Cohen, S., Wheelwright, S., Connellan, J., & Ahluwalia, J. (2000). Is there an innate gaze module? Evidence from human neonates. Infant Behav. Develop., 23, 223–229.

Bednar, J.A., Miikkulainen, R. (2003). Learning innate face preferences. Neural Computation, 15, 1525–1557.

Blažek, V., & Trnka, R. (eds.) (2008): Lidský obličej: Vnímání tváře z pohledu kognitivních, behaviorálních a sociálních věd. Karolinum: Praha.

Bomba, P.C., & Siqueland, E.R. (1983). The nature and structure of infant form categories. J. Exp. Child Psych., 35, 294–328.

Bushnell, I.W.R., Sai, F., & Mullin, J.T. (1989). Neonatal recognition of mother´s face. British J. Develop. Psych., 7, 3–15.

Corenblum, B., & Meissner, Ch.A. (2006). Recognition of faces of ingroup and outgroup children and adults. J. Exp. Child Psych., 93, 187–206.

De Haan, M., Johnson, M.H., Maurer, D., & Perett, D.I. (2001). Recognition of individual faces and average face prototypes by 1– and 3-month-old infants. Cogn. Develop., 16, 659–678.

Easterbrook, M.A., Kisilevsky, B.S., Hains, S.M.J., & Muir, D.W. (1999). Faceness or complexity: Evidence from newborn visual tracking of facelike stimuli. Infant Behavior and Development, 22, 17–35.

Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1989). Human ethology. Aldine de Gruyter: New York. Ellis, A.W., & Rolls, E.T. (1992). Cognitive mechanisms of face processing. Biol. Sci., 335, 113–119.

Farroni, T., Menon, E., Rigato, S., & Johnson, M.H. (2007). The perception of facial expressions in newborns. Europ. J. Develop. Psych., 4, 2–13.

Goren, C.C., Sarty, M., & Wu, P.Y.K. (1975). Visual following and pattern discrimination of face-stimuli by newborn infants. Pediatrics, 56, 544–549.

Haxby, J.V., Hoffman, E.A., & Gobinni, M.I. (2000). The distributed human neural system for face perception. TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 223–233.

Hay, D.C., & Cox, R. (2000). Developmental changes in the recognition of faces and facial features. Inf. Child Develop., 9, 199–212.

Hayden, A., Bhatt, R.S., Joseph, J.E., & Tanaka, J.W. (2007). The other-race effect in infancy: evidence using a morphing technique. Infancy, 12, 95–104.

Ishai, A., Schmidt, C.F., & Boesinger, P. (2005). Face perception is mediated by a distributed cortical network. Brain Research Bull., 67, 87–93.

Kahana-Kalman, R., & Walker-Andrews, A.S. (2001). The role of person familiarity in young infants' perception of emotional expressions. Child Development, 72, 352–369.

Kelly, D.J., Quinn, P.C., Slater, A.M., Lee, K., Gibson, A., Smith, M., Ge, L., & Pascalis, O. (2005). Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces. Develop. Sci., 8, F31–F36.

Langlois, J.H., Ritter, J.M., Roggmann, L.A., & Vaughn, L.S. (1991). Facial diversity and infant preferences for attractive faces. Psych. Sci., 1, 115–121.

Meltzoff, A.N., & Moore, M.K. (1983). Newborn infants imitate adult facial gestures. Child Develop., 54, 702–709.

Morton, J., & Johnson, M.H. (1991). CONSPEC and CONLERN: A two-procesess theory of infant face recognition. Psych. Rev., 98, 164–181.

Nelson, Ch.A. (2001). The development and neural bases of face recognition. Infant Child Develop., 10, 3–18.

Newell, L.C. (2005). The devopment of face expertise: the role of race, distinctiveness and intentionality. Dissertation. Univ. of Pittsburg.

Newell, L.C., Chiroco, P., & Valentine, T. (1999). Recognizing unfamiliar faces: the effect of distinctiveness and view. Quarterly J. Exp. Psychol., 52A, 509–534.

Odom, R., & Lemond, C. (1972). Developmental differences in the perception and production of facial expressions. Child Develop., 43, 359–369.

Pfaff, D.W., Arnold, A.P., Fahrbach, S.E., Etgen, A.M., & Rubin, R.T. (eds.) (2002). Hormones, brain and behavior. Amsterdam; Boston: Academic Press.

Pascalis, O., De Schonen, S., Morton, J., Deruelle, Ch., & Fabre-Grenet, M. (1995). Mother´s face recognition by neonates: a replication and a extension. Infant Behav. Develop., 18, 79–85.

Pascalis, O., De Haan, M., Nelson, Ch.A., & De Schonen, S. (1998). Long-term recognition memory for faces assessed by visual paired comparision in 3– and 6-month-old infants. J. Exp. Psych., 24, 249–260.

Pascalis, O., De Haan, M., & Nelson, Ch.A. (2002). Is face processing species-specific during the first year of life? Science, 296, 1321–1323.

Pascalis, O., Scott, L.S., Kelly, D.J., Shannon, R.W., Nicholson, E., Coleman, M., & Nelson, Ch.A. (2005). Plasticity of face processing in infancy. PNAS, 102, 5297–5300.

Pouthas, V., & Jouen, F. (2000). Psychologie novorozeněte. Chování nejmenšího dítěte a jeho poznávání. Grada: Praha.

Ramsey, J.L., Langlois, J.H., & Marti, N.C. (2005). Infant categorization of faces: Ladies first. Develop. Rev., 25, 212–246.

Ramsey-Rennels, J.L., & Langlois, J.H. (2006). Infants´ differential prossing of female and male faces. Curr. Dir. Psych. Sci., 15, 59–62.

Ro, T., Russel, C., & Lavie, N. (2001). Changing faces: a detection advantage in the flicker paradigm. Psychol. Sci., 12, 94–99.

Rubenstein, A.J., Langlois, J.H., & Roggman, L.A. (2002). What makes a face attractive and why: the role of averageness in defining facial beauty. In: Rhodes, G., Zebrowitz, L.A. (eds.). Facial Attractiveness. Evolutionary, Cognitive, and Social Perspectives. Ablex: London, 1–33.

Sangrigoli, S., & De Schonen, S. (2004). Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry, 45, 1219–1227.

Simion, F., Cassia, V.M., Turati, Ch., & Valenza, E. (2001). The origins of face perception: specific versus non-specific mechanisms. Inf. Child Develop., 10, 59–65.

Slater, A. (2002). Visual perception in the newborn infant: issues and debates. Intellectica, 34, 57–76.

Slater, A., Bremner, G., Johnson, S.P., Sherwood, P., Hayes, R., & Brown, E. (2000). Newborn infants´ preferences for attractive faces: the role of internal and external facial features. Infancy, 1, 265–274.

Slater, A., Quinn, P.C., Brown, E., & Hayes, R. (1999). Intermodal perception at birth: intersensory redundancy guides newborn infants´learning of arbitrary auditory – visual pairings. Devlop. Sci., 2, 333–338.

Turati, Ch., & Simion, F. (2002). Newborns´ recognition of changing and unchanging aspects of schematic faces. J. Exp. Child Psych., 83, 239–261.

Show all Hide