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

婴儿早期对面孔的经验决定了他们感知和处理面孔的方式。平均而言，与不太熟悉的面孔类型(例如男性和其他种族面孔)相比，婴儿在处理熟悉的面孔类型(例如，女性和相同种族的面孔)时表现出更多的专业知识(例如，更好的面部识别)。鉴于这种专业知识影响着整个发育过程中的每一次面对面的社交活动，理解为什么有些婴儿表现出这种专业知识，而另一些婴儿则没有，这一点至关重要。此外，重要的是要确定通常用于测试这一专业知识的面部中性表情是否会产生与大多数婴儿更常经历和更喜欢的微笑表情不同的结果。通过婴儿如何扫描面部，他们更喜欢看什么脸，以及他们识别面部的能力有多好，这种专业知识是显而易见的，但没有人评估这些能力是否以及如何相关。这种技能在6到9个月大的时候变得特别明显，但不清楚为什么或如何出现。还需要更好地了解这种早期的专业知识如何在以后的开发中体现出来。为了解决这些问题，这项研究将考察6-10个月大婴儿最近的面部经验、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/陌生种族面孔的扫描、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在6至10个月大的婴儿中每两周参与一次的小样本中出现并可能稳定下来的。参与者将在3.5岁时接受重新测试，以检验婴儿的面部处理能力和个人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，为什么以及如何发展面部处理专业知识。它还应展示人脸处理专业知识和其他特征(例如，气质)的个体差异如何有助于形成关于熟悉和不熟悉的社会群体的概念。例如，婴儿对某一性别或种族的情绪反应可能代表了与该社会群体相关的第一批概念。这些概念可以是积极的，也可以是消极的，对接受者如何判断和对待目标人以及目标的行为方式具有显著的影响，影响目标的人际关系、健康以及学术和职业成功。在个体如何感知、处理和获得关于不同社会群体成员的概念的起源方面，了解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.