Exploring children’s face-space: A multidimensional scaling analysis of the mental representation of facial identity

The development of norm-based coding and race-specific face prototypes: An examination of 5- and 8-year-olds’ face space

“…Furthermore, the ease with which we were able to shift 5-year-olds' prototype to extreme levels of distortion (i.e., they often selected ±70% faces as more attractive than undistorted faces) suggests that their prototype is extremely malleable and less refined than that of adults. This pattern is consistent with Nishimura, Maurer, and Gao's (2009) recent finding that 8-year-olds tend to rely on the same coding dimensions as adults but exhibit difficulty in using more than one dimension at a time and with several studies showing that children often make more errors than adults on face perception tasks (Bruce et al, 2000;Freire & Lee, 2001;Mondloch, Le Grand, & Maurer, 2002) despite processing faces holistically (de Heering, Houthuys, & Rossion, 2007;Mondloch, Pathman, Maurer, Le Grand, & de Schonen, 2007;Pellicano & Rhodes, 2003), having a system that is tuned to human faces (Mondloch, Maurer, & Ahola, 2006), and being sensitive to numerous cues to facial identity (Freire & Lee, 2001;McKone & Boyer, 2006;Mondloch et al, 2002).…”

The PCA learning effect: An emerging correlate of face memory during childhood

“…Many studies have provided evidence that adults' representations of faces are centered on a norm or average face (e.g., Anderson & Wilson, 2005;Rhodes & Jeffery, 2006) and that this type of structure has emerged by 4-5 years of age (Jeffery, Read, & Rhodes, 2013;Jeffery et al, 2011). However, as summarized in the introduction, previous studies have not been satisfactory in identifying the dimensions of the face space, in part because these dimensions did not map directly to specific facial features in adults' perceptual space as revealed by Multidimensional Scaling (Busey, 1998;Johnston et al, 1997;Nishimura et al, 2009). Our results suggest that face space may be formed by extracting the average from experienced faces and the dimensions by extracting the principal components that maximally differentiate among the faces.…”

“…Studies using multi-dimensional scaling have attempted to elucidate the details of such vectors. Usually 5-6 vectors are needed to account for most of the variance but it is not clear what each vector represents because faces at the extreme ends of a vector differ in multiple characteristics (e.g., Busey, 1998;Johnston, Milne, Williams, & Hosie, 1997;Nishimura, Maurer, & Gao, 2009).…”

“…When the faces included hair, children as young as 7 appear to use the same three dimensions as adults, with those dimensions likely representing hair color, face width, and hairstyle (Pedelty, Levine, & Shevell, 1985). Without hair cues, 8-year-old children are more variable than adults and many rely on a single dimension, which may represent eye color, unlike adults who use multiple dimensions to make each judgment (Nishimura et al, 2009). Like the studies using multi-dimensional scaling with adults, these studies are limited by the need to guess what is represented on each of the dimensions identified.…”

Delay and Age Effects on Identification Accuracy and Confidence: An Investigation Using a Video Identification Parade

“…Of late, however, a spate of papers has appeared which calls into question the whole explanation of improved face recognition with the transition from featural to holistic visual processing (Crookes & McKone, 2009;Ge et al, 2008;Nishimura, Maurer, & Gao, 2009;Picozzi, Cassia, Turati, & Vescovo, 2009;Rakover, 2002). These authors converge on the conclusion that by the age of 5 years of age, and perhaps even younger, full quantitative and qualitative maturity of facespecific perceptual development is present, and that the improvements seen in face memory with age is due entirely to the development of general cognitive factors, such as memory ability per se, ability to use deliberate task strategies, employment of meta-memory judgements, ability to concentrate, ability to avoid distraction, or the ability to narrow the focus of visual attention.…”