Children process faces holistically with the same efficiency as adults

Ventura, Paulo; Guerreiro, José C.; Domingues, Miguel; Farinha‐Fernandes, António; Leite, Isabel Cristina de Moura

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2021.103309

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Nevertheless, future research might investigate infants in an even wider age range between 3 and 7 or 8 months of age and with even larger sample sizes to determine the exact developmental course of holistic face perception. Moreover, studies with children demonstrate an adult‐like composite face effect from the age of 6 years (e.g., Mondloch et al., 2007; Ventura et al., 2021) or perhaps even 4 years (e.g., de Heering, Houthuys, & Rossion, 2007; Macchi Cassia et al., 2009) onward. The paradigm used in the present investigation may be used to confirm these findings and to reveal the developmental course of holistic face perception beyond infancy.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Holistic face processing in 4‐ and 7‐month‐old infants

Kavšek

Heil

Granrud

2022

Infancy

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Previous studies found an onset of holistic face processing in the age range between 0–4 and 7 months of age. To validate these studies, the present study investigated infants 4 and 7 months of age with a different experimental approach. In a habituation‐dishabituation experiment, the infants were tested with stereoscopic stimuli in which stripes floated above a face, thereby occluding some parts of the face (amodal completion condition), and stereoscopic stimuli in which the same face parts floated above stripes (modal completion condition). Research with adults indicates that faces are processed holistically, that is as global wholes, in the amodal, but as independent parts in the modal completion condition, resulting in superior face recognition when the occluding bars are in front of than when they are behind the visible face parts. The present study found that infants regardless of whether they are 4 or 7 months old reliably recognized and differentiated the faces in the amodal but not in the modal completion condition. Moreover, the difference between the experimental conditions was statistically significant. These findings show that approximately at the age of 4–7 months of life, infants begin to holistically unify disjoint face parts into a coherent whole.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%