Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia

Prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, is the inability to recognize faces. In severe cases, individuals with prosopagnosia may not recognize close family members, including parents and spouses, by their faces. For instance, someone with prosopagnosia might walk past their child in a crowd, only realizing their mistake upon noticing their child's distinctive backpack or favorite jacket. Prosopagnosia specifically impairs facial recognition, while the recognition of other objects or...

The Nativist Approach

The Nativist Approach

The nativist approach to infant cognitive development proposes that infants are born with inherent knowledge structures that allow them to interpret the world almost immediately. This perspective contrasts with earlier developmental theories, such as those proposed by Jean Piaget, which emphasized a more gradual acquisition of cognitive abilities through interaction with the environment. One key concept in this approach is object permanence — the understanding that objects continue to...

Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development

Piaget's Stage 1 of Cognitive Development

The sensorimotor stage, the initial phase of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development, spans the first two years of a child's life. During this period, infants actively engage with their surroundings, building cognitive awareness through direct interaction with the world. This interaction is primarily based on sensory perception and motor actions, allowing infants to gradually understand basic physical properties and predict how objects interact within their environment.
Exploration...

Piaget's Stage 2 of Cognitive Development

Piaget's Stage 2 of Cognitive Development

The preoperational stage, the second of Jean Piaget's four stages of cognitive development, spans approximately ages 2 to 7 and is characterized by the emergence of symbolic thinking. During this stage, children use language, images, and symbols to represent objects and concepts, enabling them to engage in imaginative and pretend play. This symbolic thinking supports children's ability to perform make-believe actions, such as imagining a broom as a horse or their hand as a phone, blending...

Perceptual Constancy

Perceptual Constancy

Perceptual constancy is the ability to recognize that objects remain consistent and unchanged even when their appearance varies due to changes in sensory input. There are four main types of perceptual constancy: size constancy, shape constancy, color constancy, and brightness constancy.
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Risk Factors and Clinical Severity in Chronic Venous Disease: A New Look.

International journal of dermatology·2026

Same author

Mind-mindedness in context: A comparison of measures from structured and naturalistic conditions and their associations with expressive vocabulary.

Infant behavior & development·2026

Same author

Neonatal Mimicry of Caregivers at Home: Feasibility of an Asynchronous Online Paradigm.

Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies·2026

Same author

Newborn Auditory Brainstem Response and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.

Journal of neuroscience research·2025

Same author

Automated detection of mouth opening in newborn infants.

Behavior research methods·2025

Same author

Rethinking the study of newborn sociality: Challenges and opportunities.

Infant behavior & development·2025

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 14, 2025

A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras

A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras

Published on: October 5, 2018

Infants Experience Perceptual Narrowing for Nonprimate Faces.

Elizabeth A Simpson¹, Krisztina Varga¹, Janet E Frick¹

¹Psychology Department University of Georgia.

Infancy : the Official Journal of the International Society on Infant Studies

|July 23, 2020

Summary

Infant face recognition is broadly tuned at birth, not just for primate faces but also nonprimate faces. This allows infants to specialize in recognizing faces they encounter in their environment.

More Related Videos

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

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

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Dec 14, 2025

A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras

A View of Their Own: Capturing the Egocentric View of Infants and Toddlers with Head-Mounted Cameras

Published on: October 5, 2018

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

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

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Exploring Infant Sensitivity to Visual Language using Eye Tracking and the Preferential Looking Paradigm

Published on: May 15, 2019

Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Cognitive Neuroscience
Perception

Background:

Perceptual narrowing describes how perception shifts from broad to specific with experience.
Previous research focused on primate face discrimination in infants.
Infants lose the ability to discriminate non-primate faces by 9 months of age.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether infants can discriminate nonprimate faces.
To determine the developmental trajectory of nonprimate face recognition.

Main Methods:

A visual paired comparison test was used.
4- to 6-month-old infants, 9- to 11-month-old infants, and adults participated.
Familiar and novel sheep faces were presented.

Main Results:

4- to 6-month-old infants showed a significant preference for novel sheep faces.
9- to 11-month-old infants showed no visual preference for sheep faces.
Adults demonstrated a familiarity preference for sheep faces.

Conclusions:

Infant face recognition systems are broadly tuned at birth for both primate and nonprimate faces.
Experience shapes face recognition, leading infants to specialize in familiar face types.
This broad tuning facilitates learning and specialization in face perception during early development.