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Perceptual Specialization And Configural Face Processing In Infancy, Nicole Zieber, Ashley Kangas, Alyson J. Hock, Angela Hayden, Rebecca Collins, Henrietta Bada, Jane E. Joseph, Ramesh S. Bhatt
Perceptual Specialization And Configural Face Processing In Infancy, Nicole Zieber, Ashley Kangas, Alyson J. Hock, Angela Hayden, Rebecca Collins, Henrietta Bada, Jane E. Joseph, Ramesh S. Bhatt
Alyson J. Chroust
Adults’ face processing expertise includes sensitivity to second-order configural information (spatial relations among features such as distance between eyes). Prior research indicates that infants process this information in female faces. In the current experiments, 9-month-olds discriminated spacing changes in upright human male and monkey faces but not in inverted faces. However, they failed to process matching changes in upright house stimuli. A similar pattern of performance was exhibited by 5-month-olds. Thus, 5- and 9-month-olds exhibited specialization by processing configural information in upright primate faces but not in houses or inverted faces. This finding suggests that, even early in life, infants …