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.
Department of Psychology, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK. N.A.Brace@open.ac.uk
N A
NA
Brace
G J
GJ
Hole
R I
RI
Kemp
G E
GE
Pike
M
M
Van Duuren
L
L
Norgate
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