婴幼儿面孔注意偏向：先天倾向与发展轨迹——来自正常和孤独症婴幼儿的证据

正常发展(Typically developing, TD)婴儿的先天面孔注意倾向稳定地存在于不同发展阶段不同刺激情景中, 且在生命第一年内呈现短暂下降后快速增强的发展趋势。TD婴幼儿的视觉注意在第4至6周之间发生由皮下控制向皮层控制的关键性转变之后, 伴随面孔视觉经验的不断积累, 逐渐形成的面孔特异性皮层网络对面孔的优先选择性反应逐渐增强。而孤独症谱系(Autism Spectrum Disorder, ASD)婴幼儿具备初始的面孔注意先天倾向, 但在面孔皮层发育关键期内逐渐偏离正常轨道, 在1岁左右表现出面孔注意障碍。该群体先天的感知注意损伤或社会动机缺失可能导致其在关键性转变期内的面孔视觉经验输入不足, 进而阻碍面孔特异性皮层网络的正常发展。未来研究可考虑采用生物遗传学方法和近红外脑成像技术探索新生儿面孔注意先天倾向的起源, 系统考察社会场景中感知觉特征和社会性特征对ASD高危婴儿面孔注意发展轨迹尤其是关键性转变期的影响作用。     

Converging evidence of configural processing of faces in high-functioning adults with autism spectrum disorders

There is conflicting evidence about whether individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) demonstrate configural processing of faces. We examined two types of configural processing of unfamiliar faces in high-functioning adults with ASD: Holistic processing (processing a face as a gestalt percept) and processing of second-order relations (the spatial relations among facial features, e.g., distance between two eyes). Compared to age- and IQ-matched typical adults, 17 adults with ASD demonstrated normal holistic processing (as demonstrated by the composite face effect), normal sensitivity to second-order relations in upright faces, and the expected disruption of sensitivity to second-order relations in inverted faces. They were also normal in using the internal features and shape of the external contour to make same/different judgements about facial identity. The results provide converging evidence of configural processing of unfamiliar faces in high-functioning adults with ASD, and bring into question the generalizability of previous reports of abnormal face processing in individuals with ASD.     

Self-face perception in 12-month-old infants: A study using the morphing technique

The present study investigated self-face perception in 12-month-old infants using the morphing technique. Twenty-four 12-month-old infants participated in both the main and control experiments. In the main experiment, we used the participant’s own face, an unfamiliar infant’s face (age- and gender-matched), and a morphed face comprising 50 % each of the self and unfamiliar faces as stimuli. The control experiment followed the same procedure, except that the self-face was replaced with another unfamiliar face. In both experiments, two of these stimuli were presented side by side on a monitor in each trial, and infants’ fixation duration was measured. Results showed that shorter fixation durations were found for the morphed face compared with the self-face and the unfamiliar face in the main experiment, but there were no significant preferences for any comparisons in the control experiment. The results suggest that 12-month-old infants could detect subtle differences in facial features between the self-face and the other faces, and infants might show less preference for the self-resembling morphed face due to increased processing costs, which can be interpreted using the uncanny valley hypothesis. Overall, representations of the self-face seem to a certain extent to be formed by the end of the first year of life through daily visual experience.     

Language experience influences audiovisual speech integration in unimodal and bimodal bilingual infants

Infants as young as 2 months can integrate audio and visual aspects of speech articulation. A shift of attention from the eyes towards the mouth of talking faces occurs around 6 months of age in monolingual infants. However, it is unknown whether this pattern of attention during audiovisual speech processing is influenced by speech and language experience in infancy. The present study investigated this question by analysing audiovisual speech processing in three groups of 4‐ to 8‐month‐old infants who differed in their language experience: monolinguals, unimodal bilinguals (infants exposed to two or more spoken languages) and bimodal bilinguals (hearing infants with Deaf mothers). Eye‐tracking was used to study patterns of face scanning while infants were viewing faces articulating syllables with congruent, incongruent and silent auditory tracks. Monolinguals and unimodal bilinguals increased their attention to the mouth of talking faces between 4 and 8 months, while bimodal bilinguals did not show any age difference in their scanning patterns. Moreover, older (6.6 to 8 months), but not younger, monolinguals (4 to 6.5 months) showed increased visual attention to the mouth of faces articulating audiovisually incongruent rather than congruent faces, indicating surprise or novelty. In contrast, no audiovisual congruency effect was found in unimodal or bimodal bilinguals. Results suggest that speech and language experience influences audiovisual integration in infancy. Specifically, reduced or more variable experience of audiovisual speech from the primary caregiver may lead to less sensitivity to the integration of audio and visual cues of speech articulation.     

Representation of the gender of human faces by infants: a preference for female

Six experiments based on visual preference procedures were conducted to examine gender categorization of female versus male faces by infants aged 3 to 4 months. In experiment 1, infants familiarized with male faces preferred a female face over a novel male face, but infants familiarized with female faces divided their attention between a male face and a novel female face. Experiment 2 demonstrated that these asymmetrical categorization results were likely due to a spontaneous preference for females. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the preference for females was based on processing of the internal facial features in their upright orientation, and not the result of external hair cues or higher-contrast internal facial features. While experiments 1 through 4 were conducted with infants reared with female primary caregivers, experiment 5 provided evidence that infants reared with male primary caregivers tend to show a spontaneous preference for males. Experiment 6 showed that infants reared with female primary caregivers displayed recognition memory for individual females, but not males. These results suggest that representation of information about human faces by young infants may be influenced by the gender of the primary caregiver.     

Dynamic emotional messages differentially affect 6-month-old infants’ attention to eyes and gaze cues

Infants often experience interactions in which caregivers use dynamic messages to convey their affective and communicative intent. These dynamic emotional messages may shape the development of emotion discrimination skills and shared attention by influencing infants’ attention to internal facial features and their responses to eye gaze cues. However, past research examining infants’ responses to emotional faces has predominantly focused on classic, stereotyped expressions (e.g., happy, sad, angry) that may not reflect the variability that infants experience in their daily interactions. The present study therefore examined forty-two 6-month-old infants’ attention to eyes vs. mouth and gaze cueing responses across multiple dynamic emotional messages that are common to infant-directed interactions. Overall, infants looked more to the eyes during messages with negative affect, but this increased attention to the eyes during these message conditions did not directly facilitate gaze cueing. Infants instead showed reliable gaze cueing only after messages with positive and neutral affect. We additionally observed gender differences in infants’ attention to internal face features and subsequent gaze cueing responses. Female infants spent more time looking at the eyes during the dynamic emotional messages and showed increased initial orienting and longer looking to gaze-cued objects following positive messages, whereas male infants showed these gaze cueing effects following neutral messages. These results suggest that variability in caregivers' communication can shape infants’ attention to and processing of emotion and gaze information.     

Building biases in infancy: the influence of race on face and voice emotion matching

Early in the first year of life infants exhibit equivalent performance distinguishing among people within their own race and within other races. However, with development and experience, their face recognition skills become tuned to groups of people they interact with the most. This developmental tuning is hypothesized to be the origin of adult face processing biases including the other-race bias. In adults the other-race bias has also been associated with impairments in facial emotion processing for other-race faces. The present investigation aimed to show perceptual narrowing for other-race faces during infancy and to determine whether the race of a face influences infants' ability to match emotional sounds with emotional facial expressions. Behavioral (visual-paired comparison; VPC) and electrophysiological (event-related potentials; ERPs) measures were recorded in 5-month-old and 9-month-old infants. Behaviorally, 5-month-olds distinguished faces within their own race and within another race, whereas 9-month-olds only distinguish faces within their own race. ERPs were recorded while an emotion sound (laughing or crying) was presented prior to viewing an image of a static African American or Caucasian face expressing either a happy or a sad emotion. Consistent with behavioral findings, ERPs revealed race-specific perceptual processing of faces and emotion/sound face congruency at 9 months but not 5 months of age. In addition, from 5 to 9 months, the neural networks activated for sound/face congruency were found to shift from an anterior ERP component (Nc) related to attention to posterior ERP components (N290, P400) related to perception.     

The sibling familiarity effect: Is within-person facial variability shared across siblings?

Humans are experts at familiar face recognition, but poor at unfamiliar face recognition. Familiarity is created when a face is encountered across varied conditions, but the way in which a person’s appearance varies is identity-specific, so familiarity with one identity does not benefit recognition of other individuals. However, the faces of biological siblings share structural similarities, so we explored whether the benefits of familiarity are shared across siblings. Results show that familiarity with one half of a sibling pair improves kin detection (experiment 1), and that unfamiliar face matching is more accurate when targets are the siblings of familiar versus unfamiliar individuals (experiment 2). PCA applied to facial images of celebrities and their siblings demonstrates that faces are generally better reconstructed in the principal components of a same-sex sibling than those of an unrelated individual. When we encounter the unfamiliar sibling of someone we already know, our pre-existing representation of their familiar relation may usefully inform processing of the unfamiliar face. This can benefit both kin detection and identity processing, but the benefits are constrained by the degree to which facial variability is shared.     

Eighteen‐month‐old infants show distinct electrophysiological responses to their own faces

Infants attain the developmental milestone of self‐recognition around 18 to 24 months of age. At 18 months of age, half of the infant population typically shows signs of self‐recognition in the classic mirror test. The current study examined the functional neural correlates of the perception of self in infancy. Eighteen‐month‐old infants observed photographs of their own face, the face of an unfamiliar infant, the face of their caregiver, and the face of an unfamiliar caregiver, while their EEG was registered. The results show that infants show an enhanced response to their own face compared to other faces. The N290, an established face‐selective ERP component in infants, was larger for observation of their own face compared to others’ faces. In addition to the EEG task, the mirror test was administered. Half of the infants in our sample recognized themselves in the mirror. However, there were no differences in the ERP responses between the infants who did and did not recognize themselves in the mirror. This suggests that a distinction between the neural response to self and to others does not necessarily express itself in self‐recognition behavior.     

The association of physical activity to occipito-temporal processing during face recognition

ObjectivesThis study examined the association between physical activity level and primitive cognitive processing during a face recognition task in young adults, a topic that has received little attention.DesignCross-sectional.MethodsThe face recognition task required participants to respond to famous faces but not respond to unfamiliar faces. Task performance and several occipito-temporal event-related brain potentials reflecting the various stages of face processing, from perceptual encoding (N170) to recognition (N250 and face-N400), were assessed during the face recognition task.ResultsAlthough analyses revealed no significant group differences in behavioral performance measures, neuroelectric data showed different time courses of face recognition processes between groups. Active individuals exhibited larger N250 amplitude, reflecting an early stage of facial recognition, for famous relative to unfamiliar faces, whereas inactive individuals did not exhibit such a difference.ConclusionsThese findings are suggestive of a possible association between physical activity and relatively early, primitive cognitive processes.     

Holistic processing of shape cues in face identification: Evidence from face inversion,composite faces,and acquired prosopagnosia

According to a classical functional architecture of face processing (Bruce & Young, 1986), sex processing on faces is a parallel function to individual face recognition. One consequence of the model is thus that sex categorization on faces is not influenced by face familiarity. However, the behavioural and neuro-psychological evidences supporting this dissociation are yet equivocal. To test the independence between sex processing on faces and familiar face recognition, familiar (learned) faces were morphed with new faces, generating facial continua of visual similarity to familiar faces. First, a pilot experiment shown that subjects familiarized with one extreme of the face continuum roughly perceive one half of the continuum (60 to 100% of visual similarity to familiar faces) as made of familiar faces and the other part as unfamiliar. In the experiment proper, subjects were familiarized with faces and tested in a sex decision task made on faces at the different steps of the continua. Subjects were significantly quicker at telling the sex of faces perceived as familiar (60-100%), and the effect was not observed in a control (untrained) group. These results indicate that familiar face representations are activated before sex categorization is completed, and can facilitate this processing. The nature of the interaction between sex categorization on faces and familiar face recognition is discussed.     

Development of own-race biases

This review examines the emergence and development of perceptual and social biases towards own-race individuals. We first discuss evidence regarding the early emergence of an own-race bias in facial preferences and face recognition abilities demonstrated by infants with an abundance of visual experience with own-race individuals, but little to no experience with other-race individuals. We then consider perceptual categorization of face race, visual scanning, and differential processing of own- and other-race faces in relation to recognition of face identity. Finally, we review evidence regarding own-race preferences for social partners and own-race biases in social evaluations that emerge during early childhood. Implications of the existing evidence for understanding the role of experience in perceptual development and the emergence of racial preferences and stereotypes are discussed.     

Evolutionary Relevance and Experience Contribute to Face Discrimination in Infant Macaques (Macaca mulatta)

In human children and adults, familiar face types—typically own-age and own-species faces—are discriminated better than other face types; however, human infants do not appear to exhibit an own-age bias but instead better discriminate adult faces, which they see more often. There are two possible explanations for this pattern: Perceptual attunement predicts advantages in discrimination for the most experienced face types. Additionally or alternatively, there may be an experience-independent bias for infants to discriminate own-species faces, an adaptation for evolutionarily relevant faces. These possibilities have not been disentangled in studies thus far, and these studies did not control infants’ early experiences with faces. In the present study, we tested these predictions in infant macaques (Macaca mulatta) reared under controlled environments, not exposed to adult conspecifics. We measured newborns’ (15–25 days; n = 27) and 6- to 7-month-olds’ (n = 35) discrimination of human and macaque faces at 3 ages—young infants, old infants, and adults—in a visual paired comparison task. We found that 6- to 7-month-olds were the best at discriminating adult macaque faces; however, in the first few seconds of looking, tthey additionally discriminated familiar face types—same-aged peer and adult human faces—thereby highlighting the importance of experience with certain face categories. The present data suggest that macaque infants possess both experience-independent and experientially tuned face biases. In human infants, early face skills may likewise be driven by both experience and evolutionary relevance; future studies should consider both of these factors.     

An inner face advantage in children's recognition of familiar peers

Children’s recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with the faces used as stimuli for 1 academic year. The results showed that children from all age groups demonstrated an advantage for recognition of the internal facial features relative to their recognition of the external facial features. Thus, previous observations of a shift in reliance from external to internal facial features can be attributed to experience with faces rather than to age-related changes in face processing.     

Infant preference for female faces occurs for same‐ but not other‐race faces

There has been a recent surge of interest in the question of how infants respond to the social attributes of race and gender information in faces. This work has demonstrated that by 3 months of age, infants will respond preferentially to same‐race faces and faces depicting the gender of the primary caregiver. In the current study, we investigated emergence of the female face preference for same‐ versus other‐race faces to examine whether the determinants of preference for face gender and race are independent or interactive in young infants. In Expt 1, 3‐month‐old Caucasian infants displayed a preference for female over male faces when the faces were Caucasian, but not when the faces were Asian. In Expt 2, new‐born Caucasian infants did not demonstrate a preference for female over male faces for Caucasian faces. The results are discussed in terms of a face prototype that becomes progressively tuned as it is structured by the interaction of the gender and race of faces that are experienced during early development.     

Effects of motion and audio-visual redundancy on upright and inverted face and feature preferences in 4-13-month old pre- and full-term NICU graduates

NICU infants are reported to have diminished social orientation and increased risk of socio-communicative disorders. In this eye tracking study, we used a preference for upright compared to inverted faces as a gauge of social interest in high medical risk full- and pre-term NICU infants. We examined the effects of facial motion and audio-visual redundancy on face and eye/mouth preferences across the first year. Upright and inverted baby faces were simultaneously presented in a paired-preference paradigm with motion and synchronized vocalization varied. NICU risk factors including birth weight, sex, and degree of CNS injury were examined. Overall, infants preferred the more socially salient upright faces, making this the first report, to our knowledge, of an upright compared to inverted face preference among high medical risk NICU infants. Infants with abnormalities on cranial ultrasound displayed lower social interest, i.e. less of a preferential interest in upright faces, when viewing static faces. However, motion selectively increased their upright face looking time to a level equal that of infants in other CNS injury groups. We also observed an age-related sex effect suggesting higher risk in NICU males. Females increased their attention to the mouth in upright faces across the first year, especially between 7–10 months, but males did not. Although vocalization increased diffuse attention toward the screen, contrary to our predictions, there was no evidence that the audio-visual redundancy embodied in a vocalizing face focused additional attention on upright faces or mouths. This unexpected result may suggest a vulnerability in response to talking faces among NICU infants that could potentially affect later verbal and socio-communicative development.     

The effect of familiarity on face adaptation

Face aftereffects can provide information on how faces are stored by the human visual system (eg Leopold et al, 2001 Nature Neuroscience 4 89-94), but few studies have used robustly represented (highly familiar) faces. In this study we investigated the influence of facial familiarity on adaptation effects. Participants were adapted to a series of distorted faces (their own face, a famous face, or an unfamiliar face). In experiment 1, figural aftereffects were significantly smaller when participants were adapted to their own face than when they were adapted to the other faces (ie their own face appeared significantly less distorted than a famous or unfamiliar face). Experiment 2 showed that this 'own-face' effect did not occur when the same faces were used as adaptation stimuli for participants who were unfamiliar with them. Experiment 3 replicated experiment 1, but included a pre-adaptation baseline. The results highlight the importance of considering facial familiarity when conducting research on face aftereffects.     

Discriminative infant smiling to orientations of talking faces of mother and stranger.

Thirty-two infants aged 14 and 20 weeks were presented with a live face in each of eight conditions, which consisted of all combinations of (a) a 0° or 90° orientation; (b) familiar face (the infant's mother) or distinctively unfamiliar face; and (c) talking or silent context. The previous findings that younger infants smile longer at 0° than at 90° faces and that this differential responsiveness to orientation wanes with increasing age were replicated; the hypothesis that older infants would smile longest at their mothers' talking faces in the 0° orientation was confirmed. In addition, infants of both ages smiled more at their mothers than at the stranger, although this effect interacted with orientation and sex of the infant.     

The Origin of Biases in Face Perception

ABSTRACT— Experience with certain types of faces during the first year of development defines which types of faces are more efficiently recognized later in life. In work described here, we found that infants who learned to recognize six monkey faces individually (i.e., each face was individually labeled) over a 3-month period maintained the ability to discriminate monkey faces. However, infants who learned these same six faces categorically (i.e., all faces were labeled "monkey") or were simply exposed to these faces (i.e., faces were not labeled) showed a decline in the ability to discriminate monkey faces. These results suggest that experience individuating faces from 6 to 9 months of age, via labeling, critically shapes the perceptual representation that is responsible for later recognition and discrimination of faces.     

特质焦虑在面部表情前注意加工阶段的影响：来自ERP的证据

为探讨高特质焦虑者在前注意阶段对情绪刺激的加工模式以明确其情绪偏向性特点, 本研究采用偏差-标准反转Oddball范式探讨了特质焦虑对面部表情前注意加工的影响。结果发现: 对于低特质焦虑组, 悲伤面孔所诱发的早期EMMN显著大于快乐面孔, 而对于高特质焦虑组, 快乐和悲伤面孔所诱发的早期EMMN差异不显著。并且, 高特质焦虑组的快乐面孔EMMN波幅显著大于低特质焦虑组。结果表明, 人格特质是影响面部表情前注意加工的重要因素。不同于普通被试, 高特质焦虑者在前注意阶段对快乐和悲伤面孔存在相类似的加工模式, 可能难以有效区分快乐和悲伤情绪面孔。