title: Perception and recognition of faces in adolescence.
abstract: Most studies on the development of face cognition abilities have focussed on childhood, with early maturation accounts contending that face cognition abilities are mature by 3-5 years. Late maturation accounts, in contrast, propose that some aspects of face cognition are not mature until at least 10 years. Here, we measured face memory and face perception, two core face cognition abilities, in 661 participants (397 females) in four age groups (younger adolescents (11.27-13.38 years); mid-adolescents (13.39-15.89 years); older adolescents (15.90-18.00 years); and adults (18.01-33.15 years)) while controlling for differences in general cognitive ability. We showed that both face cognition abilities mature relatively late, at around 16 years, with a female advantage in face memory, but not in face perception, both in adolescence and adulthood. Late maturation in the face perception task was driven mainly by protracted development in identity perception, while gaze perception abilities were already comparatively mature in early adolescence. These improvements in the ability to memorize, recognize and perceive faces during adolescence may be related to increasing exploratory behaviour and exposure to novel faces during this period of life.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Fuhrmann
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: L J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Knoll
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: A L
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Sakhardande
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Speekenbrink
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.|School of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: K C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Kadosh
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: S-J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Blakemore
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D003710:Demography; D000066499:Facial Recognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D055815:Young Adult