CAREER: Asymmetries in Infant Processing of Faces-Origins and Implications

University Of Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas NV

Investigators

Abstract

Young infants do not appear to perceive human faces as being special; for example, they recognize upright and inverted faces equally well, and human and monkey faces equally well. After the first year, however, infants recognize upright human faces much better than inverted faces, or the faces of monkeys. Presumably, this is related to the fact that during the first year infants have much more experience with upright human faces. Another asymmetry in experience is that infants typically see more female than male faces; on average, 70% of infants' interactions during the first year are with females. This asymmetry in experience should affect how infants perceive faces, recognize faces, learn about females and males, and scan faces. Despite a span of over 40 years of research in infant face processing, possible differences in infants' processing of female and male faces has received very little attention. Similarly, most studies have used the faces of Caucasian females as stimuli, so significant asymmetries would raise caveats regarding the generality of what is known about infant face perception. With funding by a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Rennels will explore the nature of the changes that infants undergo as they develop special sensitivity to human faces. In a series of experiments, Dr. Rennels will examine such questions as how infants represent faces at various ages, how increased experience with male faces affects recognition of other male faces, whether infants' knowledge of face-voice relations is better for females than it is for males, whether infants express visual preferences for female faces relative to male faces, and whether infants more expertly scan preferred faces than they do non-preferred faces. These studies will also examine whether infants are more likely to demonstrate preferences for and more expertly scan female faces in familiar contexts (e.g., when the faces are from a familiar racial group) than unfamiliar contexts (e.g., when the faces are from different racial groups). These studies will broaden understanding of how infants process faces of members of familiar or unfamiliar races. In addition to these research goals, the project includes development of a course in which students propose and implement community-based projects that promote social justice through application of psychological research. Students will gain an understanding of how psychology research can be used to serve the community. Positive outcomes resulting from the course projects should broadly impact the students and community.