Perceptual priming for upright and inverted faces in infants and adults

Based on recent models of the ontogeny of memory (Nelson, 1995), we hypothesize that 6-month-old infants should show evidence of repetition priming. Event-related potentials were recorded from 11 scalp sites to novel and primed upright and inverted faces. In Experiment 1 (n = 24), 6-month-old infants viewed faces that were repeated after 6 to 12 images. Overall, repeated faces demonstrated greater negativity than novel faces and upright faces demonstrated greater negativity than inverted faces. In order to ground these results in an adult model, a group of adults (n = 30) was tested in a similar experiment. Here we observed effects of repetition at an early positive component labeled the P150 as well as at the P300, with repeated images being more positive than novel images. These data support the idea that infants at 6 months are capable of revealing electrophysiological evidence of perceptual priming.