Natural Experience Modulates the Processing of Older Adult Faces in Young Adults and 3-Year-Old Children

Abstract

Just like other face dimensions, age influences the way faces are processed by adults as well as by children. However, it remains unclear under what conditions exactly such influence occurs at both ages, in that there is some mixed evidence concerning the presence of a systematic processing advantage for peer faces (own-age bias) across the lifespan. Inconsistency in the results may stem from the fact that the individual’s face representation adapts to represent the most predominant age traits of the faces present in the environment, which is reflective of the individual’s specific living conditions and social experience. In the current study we investigated the processing of younger and older adult faces in two groups of adults (Experiment 1) and two groups of 3-year-old children (Experiment 2) who accumulated different amounts of experience with elderly people. Contact with elderly adults influenced the extent to which both adult and child participants showed greater discrimination abilities and stronger sensitivity to configural/featural cues in younger versus older adult faces, as measured by the size of the inversion effect. In children, the size of the inversion effect for older adult faces was also significantly correlated with the amount of contact with elderly people. These results show that, in both adults and children, visual experience with older adult faces can tune perceptual processing strategies to the point of abolishing the discrimination disadvantage that participants typically manifest for those faces in comparison to younger adult faces.

Differential attentional allocation and subsequent recognition for young and older adult faces

“…This finding is consistent with the results of past studies that have found an own-age recognition advantage among young adults (Bäckman, 1991;Proietti, Pisacane, & Macchi Cassia, 2013) and with studies showing that young adults show greater neural activation in response to young relative to older faces (Ebner, He, Fichtenholtz, McCarthy, & Johnson, 2011;Wiese et al, 2008). The novelty of this work is that, in contrast to previous studies, faces were displayed within the context of complex scenes, presented with full bodies, and shown in direct competition with another face category.…”

The left perceptual bias for adult and infant faces in adults and 5-year-old children: Face age matters

“…Because the inversion effect (Yin, 1969) and the composite effect (Young, Hellawell, & Hay, 1987) are both typically used measures of perceptual expertise, since they are larger for faces and other objects of expertise than for non-face objects for which participants have not developed specific expertise (e.g., Ashworth, Vuong, Rossion, & Tarr, 2008;Diamond & Carey, 1986), these findings have been taken as evidence for a perceptual processing bias towards adult faces in adults. Developmental research has extended this evidence to children, showing that 3year-old (Macchi Cassia, Kuefner, Picozzi, & Vescovo, 2009;Macchi Cassia, Pisacane, & Gava, 2012;Proietti et al, 2013) and 6-year-old (Macchi Cassia, children, just like adults, manifest a discrimination advantage and a selective or larger face inversion effect for adult faces compared to other-age faces, including infant faces.…”

“…Further evidence for the impact of facial age diversity on adults' and children's face processing skills comes from studies showing that when intensive exposure to individuals from a different age group than adults occurs as part of the individual's social and/or working experience, the processing bias towards adult faces is no longer observed (e.g., de Heering & Rossion, 2008;Harrison & Hole, 2009;Kuefner et al, 2010Kuefner et al, , 2008Macchi Cassia, Picozzi, Kuefner, & Casati, 2009;Proietti et al, 2013). For example, 3-year-old (Macchi Cassia, Kuefner et al, 2009) and 6-year-old children with a younger sibling, unlike those without a younger sibling, show a generalized inversion effect and comparable discrimination abilities for adult and infant faces.…”

Development of preferences for differently aged faces of different races

“…With regard to recognition, children show a similar trend to adults in terms of typically being better at recognising adult faces. Three-year-olds without specific other-age experience are more accurate at recognizing adult faces than neonate or elderly faces (Macchi Cassia, 2011; Macchi Cassia, Kuefner, Picozzi, & Vescovo, 2009a; Proietti, Pisacane, & Macchi Cassia, 2013). Similarly, 3-year-olds without an older sibling and 6-year-olds without a sibling are better at recognising adult than child faces (Macchi Cassia, Pisacane, & Gava, 2012; Macchi Cassia, Proietti, & Pisacane, 2013).…”