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Published on: May 15, 2019
Emergence of Neural Face Selectivity in Infants Younger Than 4 Months Old
Diane Rekow1, Tanisha Arya1,2, Duygu H Bayir1
1Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Insights
Enhanced face stimuli reveal early face-selective responses in infants. More salient visual cues improve infant brain responses to faces, even with brief presentations.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Developmental Psychology
- Visual Perception
Background:
- Infant face recognition research yields inconsistent findings, particularly with rapid visual stimuli.
- Understanding the early development of face-selectivity is crucial for cognitive development studies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if increased face saliency enhances face-selective brain responses in infants during rapid visual stimulation.
- To determine the developmental emergence of face-selectivity in early infancy.
Main Methods:
- Utilized frequency-tagging electroencephalography (EEG) to measure brain responses.
- Presented face and non-face stimuli at a rapid 6-Hz rate, isolating face-selectivity at 1 Hz.
- Compared responses to standard stimuli versus a novel, more salient set of face images.
Main Results:
- A more salient set of face stimuli elicited robust face-selectivity in adults.
- Infants aged 2-6 months showed improved face-selective responses with the salient stimuli.
- The youngest infants (2-4 months) exhibited face-selectivity exclusively with the enhanced stimuli.
Conclusions:
- Increasing the saliency of visual stimuli facilitates earlier detection of face-selective responses in infants.
- The findings suggest face-selectivity emerges earlier than previously thought, dependent on visual stimulus properties.
- Stimulus optimization is key to uncovering early developmental milestones in infant visual processing.
Abstract:
Research on face-selectivity in infants under 4 months has shown mixed results, especially with rapid stimulus presentations. Here we tested whether increasing face saliency would promote face-selective responses even with brief presentation times in infants aged 4-to-6 months and younger. Using frequency-tagging EEG, we presented face and nonface stimuli at a rapid 6-Hz rate (i.e., 167 ms/stimulus), with faces appearing once per second as every 6th stimulus, therefore isolating face-selectivity at 1 Hz in the EEG spectrum. Two sets of images were presented in separate conditions: a "classic" set from previous studies and a "new" more salient set with increased luminance and size of the depicted items as well as a smoother background intending to facilitate figure-ground segregation. In Experiment 1, we validated the use of the new set to elicit high-level face-selectivity in adults (N = 19). Crucially, Experiment 2 demonstrated benefits from the new set for 2-to-6-month old infants (N = 46), with the youngest ones (2-to-4-month-olds) featuring face-selective responses only to this new set. Thus, adapting stimuli to the visual capabilities of infants uncovered earlier developmental emergence of face-selectivity to rapid visual stimulation than previously thought.
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