Dynamic Face Processing in Infants, Children, and Adults

人脸是视觉环境中最重要的刺激之一。我们战斗、逃跑、交配、合作和寻求保护的决定往往取决于成功处理人脸的结果。无法处理面孔可能会导致衰弱的适应性问题(例如自闭症)。鉴于面孔的重要性，难怪有大量的认知科学和神经科学研究致力于研究成年人的面孔处理能力，以及这种能力是如何从婴儿期到成年期出现和发展的。然而，尽管我们每天遇到的面孔大多是动态移动的面孔，比如转身、点头、微笑和说话，但我们目前对人脸处理的大部分了解都来自于使用静态面孔的研究。我们最近由NSERC资助的研究表明，成年人和婴儿处理静态和动态面孔的方式截然不同。这一新发现让我们提出了一个基本问题：我们目前基于静态人脸的知识能否用来解释人类实际上是如何处理现实生活中动态移动的人脸的？在我们最新发现的基础上，目前提出的研究计划继续进行，并极大地扩展了我目前由NSERC资助的研究。我们的目标是研究面部运动信息在我们的人脸处理中所起的特定作用。具体地说，我们将使用心理物理和眼球跟踪方法来检验婴儿、儿童和成年人静态和动态人脸处理的异同。我们的项目将弥补文献中的一个主要空白，并提供关于运动在面部加工及其发展中的作用的迫切需要的证据。我们希望我们的研究项目的发现将导致对当前的理论和假设进行重新评估，并开发出关于婴儿、儿童和成人面部加工的新的、更生态有效的描述。此外，我们的标准数据将帮助我们评估并可能使用更自然的刺激来训练有面部处理缺陷(例如自闭症)的人。

Human faces are one of the most important stimuli in our visual environment. Our decision to fight, to flee, to mate, to cooperate, and to seek protection often depends on the outcome of successful processing of human faces. Inability to process faces can lead to debilitating adaptive problems (e.g., autism). Given the importance of faces, it is no wonder that extensive cognitive and neuroscience research has been devoted to investigating face processing abilities in adults, and how such abilities emerge and develop from early infancy to adulthood. However, although faces we encounter on a daily basis are mostly dynamically moving faces that turn, nod, smile, and talk, most of what we currently know about human face processing has come from studies using static faces. Our recent NSERC-funded research has revealed that adults and infants process static and dynamic faces in a dramatically differently manner. This new discovery leads us to ask a fundamental question: Can our current knowledge based on static faces be used to account for how humans actually process faces in real life that are dynamically moving? Building on our recent discoveries, the present proposed program of research continues and extends my current NSERC-funded research significantly. We aim to investigate the specific role that facial motion information plays in our processing of human faces. Specifically, we will use psychophysical and eye-tracking methodologies to examine similarities and differences between static and dynamic face processing in infants, children, and adults. Our project will bridge a major gap in the literature and provide much needed evidence regarding the role of motion in face processing and its development. We hope the findings from our research program will lead to a re-evaluation of current theories and assumptions and the development of new and more ecologically valid accounts of face processing in infants, children, and adults. Further, our normative data will help us assess and perhaps train individuals with face processing deficits (e.g., autism) using more naturalistic stimuli.