Developmental changes in the effect of inversion: using a picture book to investigate face recognition.
A novel child-oriented procedure was used to examine the face-recognition abilities of children as young as 2 years. A recognition task was embedded in a picture book containing a story about two boys and a witch. The story and the task were designed to be entertaining for children of a wide age range. In eight trials, the children were asked to pick out one of the boys from amongst eight distractors as quickly as possible. Response-time data to both upright and inverted conditions were analysed. The results revealed that children aged 6 years onwards showed the classic inversion effect. By contrast, the youngest children, aged 2 to 4 years, were faster at recognising the target face in the inverted condition than in the upright condition. Several possible explanations for this 'inverted inversion effect' are discussed.
Brace
N A
NA
Department of Psychology, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. N.A.Brace@open.ac.uk
Hole
G J
GJ
Kemp
R I
RI
Pike
G E
GE
Van Duuren
M
M
Norgate
L
L
D000367:Age Factors; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005145:Face / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D006801:Humans; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D011601:Psychophysics; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology