The inversion effect in infancy: The role of internal and external features

Abstract

The present work examined the role of inner and outer features in infants' failure to recognize inverted faces and in their recognition of upright ones (the "inversion effect"). The first study established that the inversion effect is present in infants as young as 5 months; study 2 and study 3 demonstrated a developmental shift in the basis of this effect between 5 and 7 months. In the second study, 7-and 9-month-olds, but not 5-month-olds, could recognize a face that had its external features inverted but its internal ones upright. In the third study, 7-and 9-month-olds, but not 5-month-olds, could recognize upright faces as long as their internal features remained the same, even when the external features were new. Taken together, these studies suggest that the importance of internal features for face recognition increases between 5 and 7 months. Keywords infants; inversion effect; face perceptionFace recognition is a remarkable human achievement that is crucial for social development. Faces are highly salient and biologically significant stimuli. As a species, humans appear primed to prefer faces, or face-like stimuli, from birth (Fantz, 1964;Goren, Sarty, & Wu, 1975 ). For example, newborns prefer faces to patterns and prefer a face-like structure made up of three blobs, arranged as two 'eyes' above a 'mouth,' to other arrangements of the same elements (Simion, Valenza, Macchi Cassia, Turati, & Umilta, 2002;Turati, Simion, Milani, & Umilta, 2002;Valenza, Simion, Macchi Cassia, & Umilta, 1996). Young infants are also able to recognize individual faces, preferring their mother's face to that of a stranger in the first few days of life (Bushnell, 2003;Bushnell, Sai, & Mullen, 1989;Johnson & Morton, 1991;Pascalis, deSchonen, Morton, Deruelle, & Fabre-Grenet, 1995).In adults, face recognition is considered to be primarily dependent on configural or holistic processing, focusing more on the relation between facial features (eyes, nose, mouth, chin, ears, hairline, etc.) than the individual features themselves , see also (Carey & Diamond, 1994;Farah, Wilson, Drain, & Tanaka, 1998;Moscovich & Moscovich, 2000;Moscovich, Winocur, & Behrmann, 1997). Three different types of configurational information figure prominently in face perception: (1) first order relations, which refer to cardinal top-down ordering of features shared by all faces -eyes above noseCorresponding author: Susan A. Rose, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, 1300 Morris Park Ave, Bronx, New York, 10461, Phone # (718) Fax # (718) 518-8544, email: srose@aecom.yu.edu. Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final citable form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disc...

Female face preference in 4-month-olds: The importance of hairline

“…By removing hairline information, young infants’ ability to discriminate faces based on gender was impacted and their preference for female faces was blocked. This finding is consistent with research showing that 4-month-old infants spend more than one-third of their time exploring external features of a face (Gallay, Baudouin, Durand, Lemoine, & Lécuyer, 2006), and their recognition of faces is disrupted by removing this information (Rose et al, 2008; Turati et al, 2006). …”

“…In addition, Brown and Perrett (1993) have reported that the brows, eyes, jaw, chin, nose, mouth, and their configural relationships, all carry information about gender. Nevertheless, in the face recognition literature, existing data suggest that although young infants appear not to integrate internal feature information (i.e., eyes, nose, mouth) when recognizing familiar individuals until approximately 4 months of age (Bartrip, Morton, & de Schonen, 2001; Pascalis, de Schonen, Morton, Deruelle, & Fabre-Grenet, 1995), young infants’ recognition of unfamiliar faces from the time frame between birth and 4 months of age is led more by external features (i.e., hairline, chin, and ears) than internal features (i.e., eyes, nose, and mouth) (Rose, Jankowski, & Feldman, 2008; Turati, Macchi Cassia, Simion, & Leo, 2006). It is thus possible that external features play a role in providing infants with a basis to separate the two genders.…”

Developmental Origins of the Face Inversion Effect

“…In 4-to 6-month-olds, the effect of inversion on face recognition is seen but only under certain conditions. The mixed findings suggest that the face recognition inversion effect is developing around this time but is not yet robust (Fagan, 1972;Turati et al, 2004; see also Rose, Jankowski, & Feldman, 2008). Inversion is shown to affect infants' sensitivity to second-order configural changes of faces in 5-month-olds, but not 3-month-olds (Bhatt et al, 2005;Hayden et al, 2007).…”

Developmental Origins of Biological Motion Perception

“…Carey and Diamond (1977) found that young children do not show the inversion e ect, leading to the suggestion that young children process faces strictly as collections of features. However, more recent evidence has shown an inversion e ect in infants' face recognition, suggesting that the part-to-whole shi in processing faces occurs early in life (Rose, Jankowski, & Feldman, 2008;Younger, 1992).…”