Development of face processing expertise in children

儿童面部处理专业知识的发展

• 批准号: 6896879
• 负责人: JOAN STILES
• 金额: $ 25.9万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-06-01 至 2009-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/6896879
• 关键词: adolescence (12-20); age difference; behavioral /social science research tag; child (0-11); child psychology; children; clinical research; comprehension; early experience; experience; face expression; gender difference; human subject; learning; mental process; neural information processing; visual perception

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): An international team of researchers proposes to examine the development of face processing from infancy through adolescence. We will investigate how infants' and children's face processing expertise is tuned by their experience with different classes of faces early in development. Children from infancy through adolescence and from different countries will be tested to determine how their experience with faces of different race, gender, age, and species affect their ability to classify faces into different categories and to recognize the identity of individual faces. We will test the hypothesis that while the human visual system may be biased at birth to favor face-like stimuli, much of our face processing ability is acquired through experience with thousands of faces over the course of development. Differential degrees of exposure to different categories of faces (race, gender, age, and species) will impact on how humans classify faces into different face categories and how they recognize individual faces within these general categories. Analogous to phonetic development, at early stages of face expertise acquisition, infants and children may process a broad range of faces from different races, genders, ages, and species with equal facility. As children mature and are selectively exposed to a limited number of face categories (one's own species, race, gender, and age group), their face expertise becomes more specialized. As they become increasingly more skilled at processing faces with which they have extensive experience (expertise), they lose their natural ability to process faces from face categories with which they have limited experience. This research program will provide much needed information to form a comprehensive picture of the development of face processing abilities and to delineate the role of experience in the formation of face expertise. Our research should facilitate the development of a general theory of face processing in children and adults. The methods we refine for this project should be of use for clinical studies and assessments that involve children with atypical trajectories in the development of face processing including cases of autism and developmental prosopagnosia.

描述（由申请人提供）：一个国际研究小组提议研究从婴儿期到青春期的面部处理的发展。我们将研究婴儿和儿童的面部处理专业知识如何根据他们在发育早期对不同类别面部的经验进行调整。来自不同国家、从婴儿期到青春期的儿童将接受测试，以确定他们对不同种族、性别、年龄和物种面孔的体验如何影响他们将面孔分为不同类别和识别个人面孔身份的能力。我们将检验这样一个假设：虽然人类视觉系统在出生时可能偏向于类似面部的刺激，但我们的大部分面部处理能力是通过在发育过程中接触数千张面孔的经验而获得的。接触不同类别的面孔（种族、性别、年龄和物种）的不同程度将影响人类如何将面孔分类为不同的面孔类别以及如何识别这些一般类别中的个体面孔。与语音发育类似，在面部专业知识获取的早期阶段，婴儿和儿童可能会以同等的能力处理来自不同种族、性别、年龄和物种的各种面部表情。随着孩子的成熟并有选择地接触有限数量的面孔类别（自己的物种、种族、性别和年龄组），他们的面孔专业知识变得更加专业。随着他们在处理拥有丰富经验（专业知识）的人脸方面变得越来越熟练，他们失去了处理他们经验有限的人脸类别中的人脸的自然能力。该研究计划将提供急需的信息，以全面了解面部处理能力的发展，并描述经验在面部专业知识形成中的作用。我们的研究应该促进儿童和成人面部处理一般理论的发展。我们为这个项目改进的方法应该可用于临床研究和评估，这些研究和评估涉及在面部处理发展中具有非典型轨迹的儿童，包括自闭症和发育性面容失认症的病例。