Development of face processing expertise in children

描述（由申请人提供）：一个国际研究小组建议检查从婴儿期到青春期的面部处理的发展。我们将研究婴儿和儿童的面部处理专业知识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。从婴儿期到青春期和来自不同国家的儿童将接受测试，以确定他们对不同种族，性别，年龄和物种的面孔的经验如何影响他们将面孔分类为不同类别和识别个人面孔的能力。我们将测试的假设，虽然人类的视觉系统可能会偏向于在出生时，以有利于面部刺激，我们的大部分面部处理能力是通过经验获得成千上万的面孔在发展过程中。对不同类别的面孔（种族、性别、年龄和物种）的不同暴露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体面孔。与语音发育类似，在面部专业知识获得的早期阶段，婴儿和儿童可能会以同等的能力处理来自不同种族、性别、年龄和物种的各种面部。随着儿童的成熟，他们有选择地接触到有限数量的面孔类别（自己的物种，种族，性别和年龄组），他们的面孔专业知识变得更加专业化。随着他们在处理他们拥有丰富经验（专业知识）的面孔方面变得越来越熟练，他们失去了处理他们经验有限的面孔类别中的面孔的自然能力。这项研究计划将提供急需的信息，形成一个全面的图片的发展，面孔处理能力和描绘的作用，经验的形成面孔专业知识。我们的研究应该促进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，涉及儿童的非典型轨迹的发展，包括自闭症和发展性面容失认症的情况下，面对处理。

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.