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Updated: Apr 11, 2026

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization
05:35

Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

Published on: April 19, 2017

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Babies get it right

Hillary Hadley1, Lisa Scott1

  • 1Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, United States.

Elife
|June 3, 2015
PubMed

Insights

Infants utilize their right brain hemisphere to differentiate human faces from inanimate objects. This finding sheds light on early facial recognition development in the infant brain.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • The ability to recognize faces is crucial for social development.
  • Understanding the neural basis of face perception in infants is key to identifying developmental trajectories.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the specific brain regions involved in face perception in infants.
  • To determine if infants process human faces differently from other objects.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to monitor brain activity in infants.
  • Infants were presented with images of human faces and common objects.

Main Results:

  • A specific region in the right hemisphere of the infant brain showed heightened activity when viewing human faces.
  • This right-sided region exhibited less activation when infants observed objects.

Conclusions:

  • Infants employ a specialized neural mechanism in the right brain for distinguishing human faces.
  • This suggests an early-developing bias for face processing in the infant brain.

Keywords:
face recognitionhumaninfantsnatural imagesneuroscienceright hemispherevisual categorization

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