The composite task reveals stronger holistic processing in children than adults for child faces.
BACKGROUND
While own-age faces have been reported to be better recognized than other-age faces, the underlying cause of this phenomenon remains unclear. One potential cause is holistic face processing, a special kind of perceptual and cognitive processing reserved for perceiving upright faces. Previous studies have indeed found that adults show stronger holistic processing when looking at adult faces compared to child faces, but whether a similar own-age bias exists in children remains to be shown.


RESULTS
Here we used the composite face task--a standard test of holistic face processing--to investigate if, for child faces, holistic processing is stronger for children than adults. Results showed child participants (8-13 years) had a larger composite effect than adult participants (22-65 years).


CONCLUSIONS
Our finding suggests that differences in strength of holistic processing may underlie the own-age bias on recognition memory. We discuss the origin of own-age biases in terms of relative experience, face-space tuning, and social categorization.
Susilo
Tirta
T
Department of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia. tirta.susilo@anu.edu.au
Crookes
Kate
K
McKone
Elinor
E
Turner
Hannah
H
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D005145:Face; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D010775:Photic Stimulation