An inner face advantage in children’s recognition of familiar peers

Abstract

Children's recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Four-, 8-, and 14-year-old Chinese children were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with the faces used as stimuli for one academic year. The results showed that children from all age groups demonstrated an advantage for recognition of the internal facial features relative to their recognition of the external facial features. Previous observations of a shift in reliance from external to internal facial features can, thus, be attributed to experience with faces rather than to age-related changes in face processing.Faces are one of the most important classes of visual stimuli in one's social life. Faces contain socially relevant information, some of which are relatively permanent and stable (i.e., "face traits"), such as gender, race, and identity, while others are dynamic and transient (i.e., "face states"), such as gaze and emotion (Freire & Lee, 2003).A review of the literature on the development of face trait processing shows that the majority of studies focus on the processing of configural information (i.e., the spacing between facial features) due to the controversial encoding switch hypothesis Flin, 1985). This hypothesis proposes a shift in reliance from isolated features among young children to a later reliance on configural information among older children. Earlier studies specifically found that young children rely more on isolated features such as paraphernalia (e.g., clothing, or presence of hat or glasses) in their recognition of faces . Other studies, however, have found Address Correspondence to: Gizelle Anzures, Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology, OISE/University of Toronto, 252 Bloor St. West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 1V6, e-mail: gizelle.anzures@utoronto.ca. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript limited susceptibility to paraphernalia when paraphernalia was included with the target stimulus and with facial stimuli at test (Baenninger, 1994), or when featural rather than configural changes to faces are made (Freire & Lee, 2001). Despite the controversy over the timing of its initial emergence (Baenninger, 1994;Freire & Lee, 2001;McKone & Boyer, 2006;Pellicano, Rhodes, & Peters, 2006), studies have found that adult-like sensitivity to face configural information takes ...

The development of face expertise: Evidence for a qualitative change in processing

“…The development of eye-movements has been interpreted as evidence of the development of face expertise (Ge et al, 2008;Tanaka et al, 2014). It is thought that the progression to more sustained fixation on the diagnostic features may help the development of face processing expertise such that it becomes a more rapid and automatic process (Kelly et al, 2011) consistent with notion that face expertise involves a change in processing style and cognitive encoding , from local to holistic (Hole, 1994;Tanaka & Farah, 1993) and configural processing (Leder & Bruce, 2000).…”

“…In addition, younger children should show more fixations with wider distribution over the features than older children and adults (Hills, Willis, & Pake, 2013). Indeed, Ge et al (2008) have shown that older children tend to be able to recognise faces based on the most diagnostic features (the eyes for White faces and the nose for East Asian faces; Ge et al, 2008;Kelly et al, 2011;Liu et al, 2013). Younger children, on the other hand, rely on less diagnostic features.…”

Developmental differences between young children and adults when processing internal and external information for upright and inverted faces

“…These studies suggested that the tendency for adults to rely on internal rather than external information to recognize familiar faces, such as those of celebrities, is evidence of a developmental shift that occurs in later childhood. Several follow-up studies, however, have insisted that the previous observations of this shift were attributable to the familiarity of the faces, rather than agerelated changes in facial processing (Ge et al, 2008;Megreya & Bindemann, 2009;Wilson, Blades, & Pascalis, 2007). These researchers concluded that children generally process familiar faces, such as those of their teachers and classmates, based on internal features and identify unfamiliar faces using external features.…”

“…Although several studies have reported an adult-like use of information by young children during facial processing (Ge et al, 2008;Megreya & Bindemann, 2009;Wilson et al, 2007), the authors discussed methodological problems: the lack of comprehensive facial configurations, and separation between internal and external facial areas. In most previous studies, internal facial areas were presented in the absence of external areas, and vice versa.…”

“…In most previous studies, internal facial areas were presented in the absence of external areas, and vice versa. This enabled researchers to individually examine the effect of these facial components (e.g., Ge et al, 2008;Mondloch et al, 2002). However, from a practical perspective, the individual presentation of external or internal facial stimuli does not reflect real-life facial processing, because people do not see internal face features and external features such as hairstyles separately (Sugimura, 2013).…”