Asymmetries in Infant Face Processing - The Role of Individual Differences and Stimulus Characteristics

婴儿对面孔的早期体验决定了他们对面孔的感知和处理方式。平均而言，与不太熟悉的面孔类型（例如男性和其他种族的面孔）相比，婴儿在处理熟悉的面孔类型（例如女性和同种族的面孔）时表现出更大的专业知识（例如，更好的面部识别）。考虑到这种专业知识影响着整个发展过程中每一次面对面的社会互动，理解为什么有些婴儿表现出这种专业知识，而另一些婴儿却没有，是至关重要的。此外，重要的是要确定通常用于测试这种专业知识的面部表情的中性表情是否会产生与大多数婴儿更常见和更喜欢的微笑表情不同的结果。通过婴儿如何扫描人脸，他们更喜欢看哪些人脸，以及他们识别人脸的能力，这种专长是显而易见的，但没有人评估过这些能力是否相关，以及如何相关。这种专长在6到9个月大的时候尤为明显，但目前还不清楚它为什么或如何出现。还需要更好地理解这些早期的专业知识如何在后来的开发中体现出来。为了解决这些问题，本研究将研究6-10个月大的婴儿近期的面部经历、情绪状态、气质和运动技能如何影响他们对微笑或中性表情的女性/男性面孔或熟悉/不熟悉的种族面孔的扫描、视觉偏好和识别。它还将评估感知（扫描）和处理（偏好/识别）能力之间的关系。研究人员还将研究这种专业知识是如何产生的，并可能在6到10个月大的婴儿中每两周参与一次的小样本中稳定下来。参与者将在3.5岁时再次接受测试，以研究婴儿面部处理能力和个体特征如何预测学龄前儿童的面部处理。这项研究的意义在于，它应该提供一个更全面的理解为什么和如何人脸处理专业发展。它还应该展示个体在面部处理专业知识和其他特征（例如，气质）方面的差异如何促进熟悉和不熟悉社会群体概念的发展。例如，婴儿对特定性别或种族的情绪反应可能代表了与该社会群体相关的最初概念。这些概念可以是积极的，也可以是消极的，对感知者如何判断和对待目标人以及目标人的行为产生显著的影响，影响目标人的关系、健康、学术和职业成功。了解个体如何感知、处理和获得关于不同社会群体成员的概念的个体差异，对于理解影响人们福祉的社会因素至关重要。

Infants' early experience with faces shapes how they perceive and process faces. On average, infants show greater expertise (e.g., better facial recognition) when processing familiar face types (e.g., females and same-race faces) compared to less familiar face types (e.g., males and other-race faces). Given that such expertise impacts every face-to-face social interaction throughout development, it is critical to understand why some infants show this expertise, whereas others do not. Moreover, it is important to determine if the neutral expressions of the faces typically used to test this expertise produce results different from those found with smiling faces, an expression most infants more commonly experience and prefer. Such expertise is evident via how infants scan faces, what faces they prefer to look at, and how well they recognize faces, but no one has assessed if and how these abilities are related. This expertise becomes particularly evident between 6 and 9 months of age, but it is unclear why or how it emerges. There is also a need to better understand how this early expertise manifests later in development. To address these issues, this research will examine how 6-10-month-olds' recent facial experience, emotional state, temperament, and motor skills affect their scanning, visual preferences for, and recognition of female/male faces or familiar/unfamiliar race faces with smiling or neutral expressions. It will also assess the relationships between perception (scanning) and processing (preferences/recognition) abilities. The investigator will also examine how this expertise emerges, and presumably stabilizes, in a small sample of infants that will participate every two weeks between 6 to 10 months of age. Participants will be retested at 3.5 years of age to examine how infant face processing abilities and individual characteristics predict preschoolers' face processing.The significance of this research is that it should provide a more comprehensive understanding of why and how face processing expertise develops. It should also demonstrate how individual differences in face processing expertise and other characteristics (e.g., temperament) contribute to the development of concepts about familiar and unfamiliar social groups. For example, infants' emotional responses to a certain sex or race may represent the first concepts associated with that social group. Such concepts can be positive or negative and have noteworthy consequences for how perceivers judge and treat a target person and how that target behaves, impacting the target's relationships, health, and academic and occupational success. Gaining knowledge of individual differences in the origins of how individuals perceive, process, and acquire concepts about members of various social groups is critical to understanding the social factors that affect people's well being.