Development of face processing expertise in children

儿童面部处理专业知识的发展

• 批准号: 7051388
• 负责人: JOAN STILES
• 金额: $ 25.04万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-06-01 至 2009-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/7051388
• 关键词: adolescence (12-20); age difference; behavioral /social science research tag; child (0-11); child psychology; children; clinical research; comprehension; early experience; experience; face expression; gender difference; human subject; learning; mental process; neural information processing; visual perception

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): An international team of researchers proposes to examine the development of face processing from infancy through adolescence. We will investigate how infants' and children's face processing expertise is tuned by their experience with different classes of faces early in development. Children from infancy through adolescence and from different countries will be tested to determine how their experience with faces of different race, gender, age, and species affect their ability to classify faces into different categories and to recognize the identity of individual faces. We will test the hypothesis that while the human visual system may be biased at birth to favor face-like stimuli, much of our face processing ability is acquired through experience with thousands of faces over the course of development. Differential degrees of exposure to different categories of faces (race, gender, age, and species) will impact on how humans classify faces into different face categories and how they recognize individual faces within these general categories. Analogous to phonetic development, at early stages of face expertise acquisition, infants and children may process a broad range of faces from different races, genders, ages, and species with equal facility. As children mature and are selectively exposed to a limited number of face categories (one's own species, race, gender, and age group), their face expertise becomes more specialized. As they become increasingly more skilled at processing faces with which they have extensive experience (expertise), they lose their natural ability to process faces from face categories with which they have limited experience. This research program will provide much needed information to form a comprehensive picture of the development of face processing abilities and to delineate the role of experience in the formation of face expertise. Our research should facilitate the development of a general theory of face processing in children and adults. The methods we refine for this project should be of use for clinical studies and assessments that involve children with atypical trajectories in the development of face processing including cases of autism and developmental prosopagnosia.

描述（由申请人提供）：一个国际研究小组提议研究从婴儿期到青春期面部处理的发展。我们将研究婴儿和儿童的面部处理技能是如何通过他们在发育早期对不同类别的面部的经验来调整的。来自不同国家的从婴儿期到青春期的儿童将接受测试，以确定他们与不同种族、性别、年龄和物种的面孔的经历如何影响他们将面孔划分为不同类别和识别单个面孔身份的能力。我们将测试这样一个假设，即虽然人类的视觉系统可能在出生时偏向于支持类似面部的刺激，但我们的大部分面部处理能力是通过在发展过程中对成千上万张面孔的体验而获得的。不同程度的接触不同类别的面孔（种族、性别、年龄和物种）将影响人类如何将面孔分类为不同的面孔类别，以及他们如何在这些一般类别中识别单个面孔。与语音发展类似，在面部专业知识习得的早期阶段，婴儿和儿童可能以同样的能力处理来自不同种族、性别、年龄和物种的广泛面孔。随着儿童的成熟，他们有选择地接触到有限数量的面部类别（自己的物种、种族、性别和年龄组），他们对面部的专业知识变得更加专业化。当他们越来越熟练地处理他们拥有丰富经验（专业知识）的面孔时，他们失去了从他们经验有限的面孔类别中处理面孔的自然能力。这一研究项目将为形成面部处理能力发展的全面图景和描述经验在面部专业知识形成中的作用提供急需的信息。我们的研究应该促进儿童和成人面部加工的一般理论的发展。我们为这个项目改进的方法应该用于临床研究和评估，包括自闭症和发展性面孔失认症在内的非典型面部处理发展轨迹的儿童。