The Origins of Facial Pattern Recognition

Abstract

This chapter describes the origins of facial recognition. It focuses on the infant's ability to discriminate among and to recognize representations of faces during the first 7 months of life. The chapter reviews data on some of the individual difference and stimulus parameters that control infant's recognition of faces. Prior to a survey of the principal findings, a basic measure of infant visual perception is noted: the tendency of the infant to devote more fixations to some stimuli than to others. One such naturally occurring preference is more attention to a novel than to a previously seen target. The infants facility in discriminating among faces on a recognition task depends on the kind of representation employed. In an initial study, discrimination among face masks or among photographs were readily accomplished by 5-to 6-month-old infants, whereas subjects tested with less veridical representations gave no evidence of discrimination or recognition.