Plasticity of face processing in infancy

Pascalis, Olivier; Scott, Lisa S.; Kelly, David J.; Shannon, Robert W.; Nicholson, Ellen Colton; Coleman, Michael J.; Nelson, Charles A.

doi:10.1073/pnas.0406627102

Cited by 370 publications

(386 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…At 6 months infants are able to discriminate facial identities of human and of other species of primates equally well, suggesting a lack of bias for human faces [67]. However, by 9 months infants lose the ability to discriminate among other species faces, suggesting that their face recognition system is more narrowly tuned to human faces [67], unless they are trained on other species' faces [68]. By age 2 children are able to recognize many human faces.…”

Section: Development Of Facial Identity Recognition In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autism and the development of face processing

Golarai

Grill-Spector

Reiss

2006

Clinical Neuroscience Research

156

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Autism is a pervasive developmental condition, characterized by impairments in non-verbal communication, social relationships and stereotypical patterns of behavior. A large body of evidence suggests that several aspects of face processing are impaired in autism, including anomalies in gaze processing, memory for facial identity and recognition of facial expressions of emotion. In search of neural markers of anomalous face processing in autism, much interest has focused on a network of brain regions that are implicated in social cognition and face processing. In this review, we will focus on three such regions, namely the STS for its role in processing gaze and facial movements, the FFA in face detection and identification and the amygdala in processing facial expressions of emotion. Much evidence suggests that a better understanding of the normal development of these specialized regions is essential for discovering the neural bases of face processing anomalies in autism. Thus, we will also examine the available literature on the normal development of face processing. Key unknowns in this research area are the neuro-developmental processes, the role of experience and the interactions among components of the face processing system in shaping each of the specialized regions for processing faces during normal development and in autism. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease.

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Section: Development Of Facial Identity Recognition In Childrenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autism and the development of face processing

Golarai

Grill-Spector

Reiss

2006

Clinical Neuroscience Research

156

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“…It is possible to maintain accurate recognition memory for monkey faces if six-month-old infants are exposed regularly to other species' faces [53]. However, the exposure should be associated with consistent individuation between such faces (i.e.…”

Section: Face Processing (A) Adultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Infants' knowledge of their own species

Heron-Delaney

Wirth

Pascalis

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Recognition of individuals at first sight is important for social species and can be achieved by attending to facial or body information. Previous research suggests that infants possess a perceptual template for evolutionarily relevant stimuli, which may include humans, dangerous animals (e.g. snakes), but not non-dangerous animals. To be effective, such a mechanism should result in a systematic preference for attending to humans over non-dangerous animals. Using a preferential looking paradigm, the present studies investigated the nature of infants' early representation of humans. We show that 3.5-and six-month-old infants attend more to human beings than nonhuman primates (a gorilla or monkey) which are examplars of non-dangerous animals. This occurred when infants were presented with head or body information in isolation, as well as when both are presented simultaneously. This early preference for humans by 3.5 months of age suggests that there is a basic representation for humans, which includes both head and/or body information. However, neonates demonstrated a preference only for human faces over nonhuman primate faces, not for humans over non-human primates when the stimuli were presented with both head and body simultaneously. The results show that although neonates display a preference for human faces over others, preference for the human body only develops later, in the first few months of life. This suggests that infants have acquired some knowledge about the human body at 3.5 months of age that may have developed from their privileged experience with other humans in the first few months of life, rather than an innate ability to detect humans in their entirety.

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“…However, passive exposure to monkey faces during the 3-month period when the ability naturally declines is sufficient to maintain the infant's ability to discriminate between monkey faces (Pascalis et al, 2005). It is also important to note that although the face processing system appears to undergo a period of refinement during this time of life, it does not become fixed.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross‐Race Preferences for Same‐Race Faces Extend Beyond the African Versus Caucasian Contrast in 3‐Month‐Old Infants

Kelly

Liu²,

Ge³

et al. 2007

Infancy

193

161

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A visual preference procedure was used to examine preferences among faces of different ethnicities (African, Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern) in Chinese 3-month-old infants exposed only to Chinese faces. The infants demonstrated a preference for faces from their own ethnic group. Alongside previous results showing that Caucasian infants exposed only to Caucasian faces prefer same-race faces and that Caucasian and African infants exposed only to native faces prefer the same over the other-race faces (Bar-Haim, Ziv, Lamy, & Hodes, 2006), the findings reported here (a) extend the same-race preference observed in young infants to a new race of infants (Chinese), and (b) show that cross-race preferences for same-race faces extend beyond the perceptually robust contrast between African and Caucasian faces.It has been reported recently in two separate studies that 3-month-old infants demonstrate a visual preference for faces from their own ethnic group when paired with faces from other ethnic groups. Using a standard visual preference task, Kelly et al. (2005) found that English Caucasian infants preferred to look at Caucasian faces when paired with African, Chinese, or Middle Eastern faces. Using the same paradigm, Bar-Haim, Ziv, Lamy, and Hodes (2006) found a cross-race visual preference in Israeli and Ethiopian infants with Israeli infants showing a visual preference for Caucasian faces and Ethiopian infants preferring to look at the faces from their own racial group. Crucially, Bar-Haim et al. (2006) also tested a population of Israeli-born infants of Ethiopian parentage recruited from an absorption center

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Plasticity of face processing in infancy

Cited by 370 publications

References 26 publications

Autism and the development of face processing

Autism and the development of face processing

Infants' knowledge of their own species

Cross‐Race Preferences for Same‐Race Faces Extend Beyond the African Versus Caucasian Contrast in 3‐Month‐Old Infants

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