Development of face processing expertise in children

描述(由申请者提供)：一个国际研究团队提议研究脸部加工从婴儿期到青春期的发展。我们将调查婴儿和儿童的脸部处理专业知识是如何根据他们在发育早期与不同类别面孔的经验进行调整的。从婴儿期到青春期以及来自不同国家的儿童将接受测试，以确定他们与不同种族、性别、年龄和物种的面孔打交道的经历如何影响他们将面孔归类到不同类别和识别个人面孔的能力。我们将测试这一假设，即虽然人类的视觉系统可能在出生时就偏向于类似脸部的刺激，但我们的大部分脸部处理能力是通过在发育过程中经历数千张面孔而获得的。接触不同类别的面孔(种族、性别、年龄和物种)的不同程度将影响人类如何将面孔分类为不同的面孔类别，以及他们如何识别这些一般类别中的个别面孔。与语音发展类似，在面孔技能习得的早期阶段，婴儿和儿童可能会同样容易地处理来自不同种族、性别、年龄和物种的广泛面孔。随着孩子们的成熟，他们选择性地接触到有限数量的面孔类别(一个人自己的物种、种族、性别和年龄组)，他们的面孔技能变得更加专业。随着他们变得越来越熟练地处理他们有丰富经验(专业知识)的人脸，他们失去了处理来自他们有限经验的人脸类别的天生能力。这项研究计划将提供急需的信息，以形成一个全面的面孔处理能力的发展图景，并描绘经验在面孔专业知识形成中的作用。我们的研究应该有助于儿童和成人面孔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，这些研究和评估涉及具有非典型轨迹的儿童在面孔加工的发展过程中，包括自闭症和发育性面孔失认症的病例。

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.