Searching for faces of different ages: Evidence for an experienced-based own-age detection advantage in adults

Previous studies have shown that attention deployment in visual search tasks is modulated by face race and emotional expression, with a search asymmetry in favor of those faces that are less efficiently discriminated and recognized at the individual level (i.e., other-race faces and angry faces). Face age is another dimension affecting how faces are remembered, as it has been widely reported that young adults show significant deficits in recognizing other-age faces. By comparing adults' search efficiency for own- and other-age faces in a visual search task in which face age was the target feature we explored whether the mirror pattern of detection and recognition effects found for race biases generalizes to age biases, and whether search efficiency for adult and nonadult faces is modulated by experience accumulated with nonadult faces. Search efficiency was greater for adult faces than for infant (Experiment 1) or child faces (Experiment 2) in adults with limited experience with infants or children, whereas there was no sign of search asymmetry in preschool teachers who have had extensive recent experience with children (Experiment 2). Results indicate that the influence of age on attention deployment parallels the effects that this face attribute has on face recognition, and that both effects are experience-based.