An inner face advantage in children's recognition of familiar peers.
Children's recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with the faces used as stimuli for 1 academic year. The results showed that children from all age groups demonstrated an advantage for recognition of the internal facial features relative to their recognition of the external facial features. Thus, previous observations of a shift in reliance from external to internal facial features can be attributed to experience with faces rather than to age-related changes in face processing.
Ge
Liezhong
L
Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou 310018, People's Republic of China.
Anzures
Gizelle
G
Wang
Zhe
Z
Kelly
David J
DJ
Pascalis
Olivier
O
Quinn
Paul C
PC
Slater
Alan M
AM
Yang
Zhiliang
Z
Lee
Kang
K
D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009949:Orientation; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010379:Peer Group; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D021641:Recognition, Psychology