Infants rapidly detect human faces in complex naturalistic visual scenes. Issue 6 (29th April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kelly, David J.; Duarte, Sofia; Meary, David; Bindemann, Markus; Pascalis, Olivier
• Is Part Of: Developmental science. Volume 22:Issue 6(2019)
• Page Start: n/a
• Page End: n/a
• Publication Date: 2019-04-29
• Subjects: eye movements -- face detection -- infancy -- visual search; Developmental psychology -- Periodicals; Psychology, Comparative -- Periodicals; 155
• DOI: 10.1111/desc.12829
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1363-755X

Abstract

Abstract: Infants respond preferentially to faces and face‐like stimuli from birth, but past research has typically presented faces in isolation or amongst an artificial array of competing objects. In the current study infants aged 3‐ to 12‐months viewed a series of complex visual scenes; half of the scenes contained a person, the other half did not. Infants rapidly detected and oriented to faces in scenes even when they were not visually salient. Although a clear developmental improvement was observed in face detection and interest, all infants displayed sensitivity to the presence of a person in a scene, by displaying eye movements that differed quantifiably across a range of measures when viewing scenes that either did or did not contain a person. We argue that infant's face detection capabilities are ostensibly "better" with naturalistic stimuli and artificial array presentations used in previous studies have underestimated performance. Abstract : We report clear evidence for face detection and orienting in a sample of 241 infants aged 3‐ to 12‐months of age using complex naturalistic scenes. The artificial array presentations used in previous studies might have underestimated infant abilities as they lack context and are unfamiliar to infants.