Developmental Changes in the Scanning of Faces by Infants.

Autor/inn/en	Maurer, Daphne; Salapatek, Philip
Titel	Developmental Changes in the Scanning of Faces by Infants.
Quelle	(1975), (19 Seiten) PDF als Volltext kostenfreie Datei Verfügbarkeit
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Monographie
Schlagwörter	Age Differences; Discrimination Learning; Eye Fixations; Infants; Mothers; Physical Characteristics; Stranger Reactions; Visual Perception + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Age; Difference; Age difference; Altersunterschied; Lernen; Lernprozess; Infant; Toddler; Toddlers; Kleinkind; Mother; Mutter; Körperliche Erscheinung; Fremdenprüfung; Visuelle Wahrnehmung
Abstract	This study investigated the way 12 infants, aged 1 month and 2 months, scanned the still and expressionless faces of their mothers, of strange women, and of strange men. Each infant was placed in a padded head-restraining cradle under a half-silvered mirror which was angled at 45 degrees to enable the child to view an adult's face at an optical distance of 48 cm. Infant eye fixation was recorded on videotape by corneal photography and replays were used to score the fixations of duration greater than 2 seconds on eight facial features: hairline, chin, right eye, left eye, nose, mouth, right ear and left ear. Data indicated that at 1 month of age infants fixated away from faces most of the time, looked at their mothers' faces even less often than at the strangers' faces, and looked at a limited portion of the facial perimeter. In contrast, 2-month-olds fixated the faces most of the time, looked at more facial features, and were more likely to look at internal features--especially the eyes. These results suggest that infants as young as 1 month old can discriminate their mothers' faces from strangers' faces, a discrimination which is probably based on differences in hairline and chin. Possible bias in results across the two age levels may be due to the use of motionless expressionless faces, which have been avoided by 1-month-old infants in other studies: results are compared to those obtained for infant scanning of inanimate two-dimensional shapes. (GO)
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC