Faces as forms in the world of the newborn

Walton, Gail E.; Armstrong, Erika S.; Bower, T. G. R.

doi:10.1016/s0163-6383(97)90042-4

Cited by 20 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…A common expressed interpretation of the presence of the mother's face recognition in the neonatal period is in terms of an innate perceptual mechanism that detects and responds specifically to faces (Johnson and Morton, 1991;Meltzoff, 1995;Walton et al, 1997). The present results do not support this hypothesis.…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 89%

“…Not only do neonates prefer to look at a composite of previously seen faces than at a composite of previously unseen faces (Walton and Bower, 1993), but can recognize a learned face over transformations (Walton et al, 1997), and even learn an image similar to a composite of the faces they have seen in the first hours of birth (Slater et al, 1998). Altogether these data suggest a rapid learning about faces within the first hours of birth, and the establishment of}at least}a rudimentary representation of faces.…”

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confidence: 86%

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The role of the mother's voice in developing mother's face preference: Evidence for intermodal perception at birth

Sai

2005

Inf. Child Develop.

173

115

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Four experiments are described which investigated the role of the mother's voice in facilitating recognition of the mother's face at birth. Experiment 1 replicated our previous findings (Br. J. Dev. Psychol. 1989; 7: 3-15; The origins of human face perception by very young infants. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, 1990) indicating a preference for the mother's face when a control for the mother's voice and odours was used only during the testing. A second experiment adopted the same procedures, but controlled for the mother's voice from birth through testing. The neonates were at no time exposed to their mother's voice. Under these conditions, no preference was found. Further, neonates showed only few head turns towards both the mother and the stranger during the testing. Experiment 3 looked at the number of head turns under conditions where the newborn infants were exposed to both the mother's voice and face from birth to 5 to 15 min prior to testing. Again, a strong preference for the mother's face was demonstrated. Such preference, however, vanished in Experiment 4, when neonates had no previous exposure to the mother's voice-face combination. The conclusion drawn is that a prior experience with both the mother's voice and face is necessary for the development of face recognition, and that intermodal perception is evident at birth. The neonates' ability to recognize the face of the mother is most likely to be rooted in prenatal learning of the mother's voice.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 89%

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confidence: 86%

The role of the mother's voice in developing mother's face preference: Evidence for intermodal perception at birth

Sai

2005

Inf. Child Develop.

173

115

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“…This representational bias for faces discussed in the previous section ensures that newborn infants have a predisposition to attend to faces, and it is clear that soon after birth they learn to distinguish between individual faces, form prototypes of faces they have seen only briefly, and recognize faces across various transformations (such transformations as size changes and a change from facing straight ahead to half profile) (Bushnell, Sai, & Mullin, Visual Perception 21 1989;Field, Cohen, Garcia, & Greenberg, 1984;Walton, Armstrong, & Bower, 1997Walton, Bower, & Bower, 1992). Apparently, this recognition is not dependent solely on facial features.…”

Section: Face Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Visual Perception

Slater¹

2004

Blackwell Handbook of Infant Development

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Child-Clinical Psychology, Development of Body Image, Eating Disorders and Obesity in In G. Bremner (Ed.), Blackwell handbook of infant development. Part III focuses on the early development of infants' ability to monitor others in In G. Bremner & A. Fogel (Eds.), Blackwell Handbook of Infant Development. We are studying groups of infants at-risk for autism (such as the younger siblings of In: The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Infant Development 2nd Edition.

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“…. However, recent studies show that newborns are capable of learning faces in the first few hours and days after birth (Bushnell et al, 1989;Field et al, 1984;Walton et al, 1997;Walton and Bower, 1993). It has been difficult to reconcile the existing interactional models with early learning of faces.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning Innate Face Preferences

Bednar

Miikkulainen

2003

Neural Computation

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Newborn humans preferentially orient to face-like patterns at birth, but months of experience with faces is required for full face processing abilities to develop. Several models have been proposed for how the interaction of genetic and evironmental influences can explain this data. These models generally assume that the brain areas responsible for newborn orienting responses are not capable of learning and are physically separate from those that later learn from real faces. However, it has been difficult to reconcile these models with recent discoveries of face learning in newborns and young infants. We propose a general mechanism by which genetically specified and environmentdriven preferences can coexist in the same visual areas. In particular, newborn face orienting may be the result of prenatal exposure of a learning system to internally generated input patterns, such as those found in PGO waves during REM sleep. Simulating this process with the HLISSOM biological model of the visual system, we demonstrate that the combination of learning and internal patterns is an efficient way to specify and develop circuitry for face perception. This prenatal learning can account for the newborn preferences for schematic and photographic images of faces, providing a computational explanation for how genetic influences interact with experience to construct a complex adaptive system.

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Faces as forms in the world of the newborn

Cited by 20 publications

References 27 publications

The role of the mother's voice in developing mother's face preference: Evidence for intermodal perception at birth

The role of the mother's voice in developing mother's face preference: Evidence for intermodal perception at birth

Visual Perception

Learning Innate Face Preferences

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