The development of perceptual sensitivity to second-order facial relations in children

Gradual improvement in fine-grained sensitivity to triadic gaze after 6 years of age

“…The 8-year-olds required a much greater mismatch in the direction of gaze than the adults to reliably detect the mismatch. This is consistent with findings that children in this age range are less sensitive than adults in making other judgments about spatial relations in both faces and non-face stimuli (Baudouin et al, 2010;Hadad, Maurer, & Lewis, 2010a;Hadad, Maurer, & Lewis, 2010b).…”

“…Children are not as sensitive as adults to the alignment of abutting lines (Vernier acuity) (see Skoczenski & Norcia, 1999) or to the distance between the eyes (Baudouin, Gallay, Durand, & Robichon, 2010). Given the protracted developmental trajectory for those skills, we suspected that children might also not be as sensitive to small shifts in eye position.…”

Developmental differences between young children and adults when processing internal and external information for upright and inverted faces

“…For example, in a study by Gilchrist and McKone (2003), in which internal facial stimuli were shown without external facial stimuli, the authors found a pattern of sensitivity to second-order relationships in the 7-year-old participants that was similar to that in adults. However, in a study by Baudouin, Gallay, Durand, and Robichon (2010), 7-year-olds did not show the aforementioned adult-like sensitivity to second-order relationships when identifying natural faces. Indeed, accounting for the interaction between internal and external facial areas is central to clarifying the developmental differences in facial processing.…”

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

“…We chose to test 7-and 9-year-olds because in this age range, children's basic visual functions (e.g., acuity, contrast sensitivity) become adult-like. However, even at age 9, some high-level visual functions (e.g., matching facial identities across views; discriminating small differences in the spacing of facial features; sensitivity to biological motion) are still not adult-like (Baudouin, Gallay, Durand, & Robichon, 2010;De Heering, Rossion, & Maurer, 2012;Hadad, Maurer, & Lewis, 2011;Mondloch, Geldart, Maurer, & Le Grand, 2003). Moreover, 7-and 9-year-olds are in the age range during which there are face-specific increases in memory (Weigelt et al, 2014).…”