Birthweight predicts individual differences in adult face recognition ability

Abstract

It has long been known that premature birth and/or low birthweight can lead to general difficulties in cognitive and emotional functioning throughout childhood. However, the influence of these factors on more specific processes has seldom been addressed, despite their potential to account for wide individual differences in performance that often appear innate. Here, we examined the influence of gestation and birthweight on adults' face perception and face memory skills. Performance on both sub-processes was predicted by birthweight and birthweight-for-gestation, but not gestation alone. Evidence was also found for the domain-specificity of these effects: No perinatal measure correlated with performance on object perception or memory tasks, but they were related to the size of the face inversion effect on the perceptual test. This evidence indicates a novel, very early influence on individual differences in face recognition ability, which persists into adulthood, influences face-processing strategy itself, and may be domain-specific. Much evidence suggests that premature birth or low birthweight can lead to generalized difficulties in cognitive and emotional functioning (see Molloy et al., 2013). Yet, little work has considered whether perinatal factors may account for individual differences in more specific abilities, which are often interpreted in terms of heritability. For instance, in the face recognition literature, the ability to recognize facial identity appears to vary from very early childhood (