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Is face processing species-specific during the first year of life?

Olivier Pascalis1, Michelle de Haan, Charles A Nelson

  • 1Department of Psychology, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TP, UK. o.pascalis@sheffield.ac.uk

Science (New York, N.Y.)
|May 23, 2002
PubMed
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Infant face recognition narrows with age, similar to speech sound perception. This "perceptual narrowing" suggests a general cognitive change in how infants process familiar categories.

Area of Science:

  • Developmental psychology
  • Cognitive neuroscience
  • Human and comparative psychology

Background:

  • Infants' ability to distinguish native speech sounds improves between 6-10 months, while foreign speech sound discrimination declines.
  • This developmental shift is termed "perceptual narrowing."

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if perceptual narrowing, observed in speech sound processing, also occurs in face recognition.
  • To determine if this phenomenon is specific to language or a more general cognitive process.

Main Methods:

  • Utilized the visual paired-comparison procedure to test face discrimination.
  • Compared the abilities of 6-month-olds, 9-month-olds, and adults.
  • Tested discrimination of both human and monkey faces.

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Main Results:

  • Six-month-olds demonstrated discrimination between individuals of both human and monkey species.
  • Nine-month-olds and adults showed discrimination only for human faces, not monkey faces.
  • This indicates a decline in the ability to discriminate non-native faces with age.

Conclusions:

  • The "perceptual narrowing" phenomenon extends beyond language to face processing.
  • Results suggest a general change in neural networks underlying early cognitive development.
  • This developmental shift impacts how infants categorize and recognize faces from different species.