Recognition of Mother's Photographed Face by the Three-Month-Old Infant

Barrera, Maria E.; Maurer, Daphne

doi:10.2307/1129196

Cited by 109 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Infants of 14 weeks and older have considerable experience in scanning faces. Moreover, their mother's face is very well known to them by this time (Barrera & Maurer, 1981). The abstract display, on the other hand, might still have been novel.…”

Section: Development Of Scanning Of the Face And The Abstract Stimulusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental Changes in Visual Scanning of Dynamic Faces and Abstract Stimuli in Infants: A Longitudinal Study

Hunnius

Geuze

2004

Infancy

151

144

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The characteristics of scanning patterns between the ages of 6 and 26 weeks were investigated through repeated assessments of 10 infants. Eye movements were recorded using a corneal-reflection system while the infants looked at 2 dynamic stimuli: the naturally moving face of their mother and an abstract stimulus. Results indicated that the way infants scanned these stimuli stabilized only after 18 weeks, which is slightly later than the ages reported in the literature on infants' scanning of static stimuli. This effect was especially prominent for the abstract stimulus. From the 14-week session on, infants adapted their scanning behavior to the stimulus characteristics. When scanning the video of their mother's face, infants directed their gaze at the mouth and eye region most often. Even at the youngest age, there was no indication of an edge effect.When infants are born, their motor skills are very limited, and the fact that they have very little control over their limbs restricts the way in which they are able to explore the world around them. The oculomotor system-unlike other motor systems-approximates its mature state several months after birth. The infant exercises this system every day from birth on. This makes vision one of the most important channels through which babies learn about the world surrounding them. However, during the first months of life, eye movements and visual acuity are also subject to certain constraints. For example, during the first month, eye movements INFANCY, 6(2),

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Section: Development Of Scanning Of the Face And The Abstract Stimulusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Developmental Changes in Visual Scanning of Dynamic Faces and Abstract Stimuli in Infants: A Longitudinal Study

Hunnius

Geuze

2004

Infancy

151

144

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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“…As children are extraordinarily sensitive to stimuli from the family environment and spend most of their time -especially before attending school -among family members, one may well expect that parental faces are favored stimuli. Former research indicated that infants as young as 3 months old were able to differentiate between their mothers' face and unknown individuals' faces (BARRERA and MAURER 1981;DE SCHONEN and MATHIVET 1990). The father's face was preferred to unknown male faces from about 4 months after birth (WARD 1998).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of attachment on preschool children's preference for parent-resembling faces — A possible link to sexual imprinting

Kocsor

Gyuris

Bereczkei³

2013

Journal of Evolutionary Psychology

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Abstract. One possible form of how children use parental models in their social relations would be if children showed more willingness to make friends with peers resembling their parents. To test this possibility, composite faces created from 3 to 6 year old children's photos were transformed to resemble facial images of their parents. The children were asked to show which one of the two same-sex transforms they find more appealing: the familial or the control face. Children who lived in emotional proximity to their parents, and in particular to their mothers, were attracted more to father-resembling faces than to unfamiliar ones. These results suggest that childhood experiences influence face preferences. This bias may affect social decisions later in adulthood, and could help to explain preferences for parent-resembling mates.

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“…Many face processing skills emerge during early infancy, including differentiation of some emotional expressions (Barrera & Maurer, 1981;Young-Browne, Rosenfeld, & Horowitz, 1977); discrimination of the direction of eye gaze (Hains & Muir, 1996;Hood, Willen, & Driver, 1998;Vecera & Johnson, 1995); formation of a mental prototype of a group of faces (de Haan, Johnson, Maurer, & Perrett, 2001); and recognition of a personÕs face posing with different head orientations (Pascalis, de Haan, Nelson, & de Schonen, 1998). Nevertheless, schoolaged children are not as proficient as adults at processing faces, particularly in recognizing facial identity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%