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Getting to know you: The development of mechanisms underlying face learning
Claire M Matthews1, Emily E Davis1, Catherine J Mondloch1
1Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario L2S 3A1, Canada.
Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
|December 9, 2017
Summary
Children aged 6 years and older can recognize familiar faces despite appearance changes. This study shows that key face-learning abilities, like ensemble coding, are developed by age 6.
Area of Science:
- Developmental psychology
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Perception
Background:
- Most face recognition studies use limited images, neglecting real-world appearance variability.
- Familiar face recognition improves significantly by age 6, despite natural appearance changes.
- Two mechanisms for adult face familiarity are proposed but their developmental trajectory is unknown.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the development of face-learning mechanisms in children (6-11 years).
- To investigate children's (6-10 years) and adults' ensemble coding abilities.
- To assess children's capacity to use appearance variability for recognizing new faces.
Main Methods:
- Experiment 1: Assessed ensemble coding (extracting average identity from multiple instances) in children and adults.
- Experiment 2: Used a child-friendly perceptual matching task to evaluate learning from within-person appearance variability.
- Participant exposure to images varied across targets in Experiment 2.
Main Results:
- Children were less accurate than adults in recognizing novel faces with appearance variability.
- No significant age-related improvement was found in ensemble coding from ages 6-10.
- No age-related improvement was observed in using appearance variability for new face learning.
Conclusions:
- Both ensemble coding and utilizing appearance variability for face learning appear to be developed by age 6.
- These findings suggest fundamental face-learning mechanisms are established early in childhood.
- The study has implications for understanding face learning, language, and music development.
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