Discrimination of faces by young infants

Bushnell, Ian

doi:10.1016/0022-0965(82)90022-4

Cited by 62 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Infants are born equipped with mechanisms, possibly subcortical, that direct attention to faces (Johnson, Dziurawiec, Ellis, & Morton, 1991;Goren, Sarty, & Wu, 1975), and experiments have shown that they engage in sophisticated face processing early in life. Newborns can recognize their mother's face via the external features (Pascalis, de Schonen, Morton, deRurelle, & FabreGrenet, 1995;Bushnell, Sai, & Mullin, 1982), and by 8 weeks, they begin to use the internal features as well (Blass & Camp, 2004). In addition to facial identity, work has shown that infants make fine discriminations for facial attractiveness (Slater, Bremner, Slater, & Mason, 2000;Slater et al 1998), facial expressions (Field et al, 1982; see also work in macaques, Sackett, 1966), and eye gaze direction (Blass & Camp, 2001).…”

Section: The Development Of Face Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissociations of Face and Object Recognition in Developmental Prosopagnosia

Duchaine

Nakayama

2005

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

231

196

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Neuropsychological studies with patients suffering from prosopagnosia have provided the main evidence for the hypothesis that the recognition of faces and objects rely on distinct mechanisms. Yet doubts remain, and it has been argued that no case demonstrating an unequivocal dissociation between face and object recognition exists due in part to the lack of appropriate response time measurements (Gauthier et al., 1999). We tested seven developmental prosopagnosics to measure their accuracy and reaction times with multiple tests of face recognition and compared this with a larger battery of object recognition tests. For our systematic comparison, we used an old/new recognition memory paradigm involving memory tests for cars, tools, guns, horses, natural scenes, and houses in addition to two separate tests for faces. Developmental prosopagnosic subjects performed very poorly with the face memory tests as expected. Four of the seven prosopagnosics showed a very strong dissociation between the face and object tests. Systematic comparison of reaction time measurements for all tests indicates that the dissociations cannot be accounted for by differences in reaction times. Contrary to an account based on speed accuracy tradeoffs, prosopagnosics were systematically faster in nonface tests than in face tests. Thus, our findings demonstrate that face and nonface recognition can dissociate over a wide range of testing conditions. This is further support for the hypothesis that face and nonface recognition relies on separate mechanisms and that developmental prosopagnosia constitutes a disorder separate from developmental agnosia.

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Section: The Development Of Face Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissociations of Face and Object Recognition in Developmental Prosopagnosia

Duchaine

Nakayama

2005

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

231

196

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“…Numerous studies have found precursors of these capacities in infants: For example, infants are able to discriminate sentences in different languages , distinguish sets of objects based on their numerosity (Feigenson, Carey, & Spelke, 2002), or recognize known faces (Bushnell, 1982). These abilities are not so different from those of other animals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Common Neural Basis for Phoneme Processing in Infants and Adults

Dehaene‐Lambertz

Gliga²

2004

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience

106

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Abstract& Investigating the degree of similarity between infants' and adults' representation of speech is critical to our understanding of infants' ability to acquire language. Phoneme perception plays a crucial role in language processing, and numerous behavioral studies have demonstrated similar capacities in infants and adults, but are these subserved by the same neural substrates or networks? In this article, we review event-related potential (ERP) results obtained in infants during phoneme discrimination tasks and compare them to results from the adult literature. The striking similarities observed both in behavior and ERPs between initial and mature stages suggest a continuity in processing and neural structure. We argue that infants have access at the beginning of life to phonemic representations, which are modified without training or implicit instruction, but by the statistical distributions of speech input in order to converge to the native phonemic categories. &

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Section: Stimuli and Proceduresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The experimenter was the opposite gender from the mother, wore glasses if the mother typically did not wear them, and adopted a different hairline than the mother (wearing a fitted knit cap if she had bushy hair that stood out from the skull line). The factors of gender, hairline, and glasses have been found to be salient cues for facial discrimination and recognition in studies ranging from neonates to adults (Bushnell, 1982;Carey & Diamond, 1977;Fagan & Singer, 1979;Haith, Bergman, & Moore, 1977).Second, the procedure ensured that the infants visually tracked the mother's exit from the test cubicle after she initially put the infant in the chair. Poor control over maternal leavetaking and the entrance of the experimenter was reported to dampen imitative responding in previous work with 6-week-olds (Meltzoff & Moore, 1992).…”

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confidence: 99%

Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons

Meltzoff¹,

Moore²

2002

Infant Behavior and Development

135

152

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Imitation was tested both immediately and after a 24-hr retention interval in 6-week-old infants. The results showed immediate imitation, which replicates past research, and also imitation from memory, which is new. The latter finding implicates recall memory and establishes that 6-weekolds can generate actions on the basis of stored representations. The motor organization involved in imitation was investigated through a microanalysis of the matching response. Results revealed that infants gradually modified their behavior towards more accurate matches over successive trials. It is proposed that early imitation serves a social identity function. Infants are motivated to imitate after a 24-hr delay as a means of clarifying whether the person they see before them is the same one they previously encountered. They use the reenactment of a person's behavior to probe whether this is the same person. In the domain of inanimate objects, infants use physical manipulations (e.g., shaking) to perform this function. Imitation is to understanding people as physical manipulation is to understanding things. Motor imitation, the behavioral reenactment of things people do, is a primitive means of understanding and communicating with people. Keywordsimitation; memory; mental representation; faces; cross-modal; motor coordination; self; identity; communication; theory of mind; development Children learn by watching adults. Young children often do as parents do instead of as parents say, suggesting that visual models exert a powerful influence on children's actions. In infancy, before language, imitation plays an especially prominent role: It is an avenue for teaching motor skills and also embodies a mutuality and reciprocity that is the essence of communication at the nonverbal level. As apparently simple and commonplace as imitation is, it presents some of the deepest puzzles for theories of infancy. In order to imitate, the child must see the adult's actions, use this visual perception as a basis for an action plan, and execute the motor output. Thus, imitation taps perception, cross-modal coordination, and motor control. If imitation takes place after a significant delay, memory is also involved. The type of memory indexed by imitation is not merely recognition memory, because the infant is doing more than seeing a pattern as familiar or novel. The infant must generate an action on the basis of a memory, thus illustrating a primitive form of nonverbal recall memory (Mandler, 1990;Meltzoff, 1985Meltzoff, , 1988aMeltzoff, , 1990b.Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Andrew N. Meltzoff, Department of Psychology (WJ-10), University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195. NIH Public Access NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author ManuscriptThe rich psychological web in which imitation is situated-learning, communication, perception-action links, memory, and representation-has made it an enduring topic in developmental psychology (Baldwin, 1906;Piaget, 1962) and an issue in philosophy of...

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Discrimination of faces by young infants

Cited by 62 publications

References 11 publications

Dissociations of Face and Object Recognition in Developmental Prosopagnosia

Dissociations of Face and Object Recognition in Developmental Prosopagnosia

Common Neural Basis for Phoneme Processing in Infants and Adults

Imitation, memory, and the representation of persons

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