Facial Recognition and Perception Process in Children

 Link: http://rubin.rub.de/en/how-children-perceive-faces

In the article “How Children Perceive Faces” by Julia Weiler, developmental psychologists focus on studying and discovering the specific developmental timeframe in which infants and young children experience the attainment of cognitive, physical, social, and physiological skills and changes. Specifically, the developmental psychologists conduct investigative studies concerning at which stage of cognitive and emotional development young children can develop the cognitive skill of facial perception. According to neuropsychologist Professor Dr. Sarah Weigelt, the task of identifying at which stage in development individuals fully posses the ability to perceive and recognize faces cannot be answered by stating a specific age, for the ability of facial perception develops gradually throughout an individuals’ lifetime. Due to the fact that facial perception and recognition is not an all or nothing developmental process, Dr. Sarah Weigelt decided to conduct a research study on facial recognition and perception abilities in young children as a means of discovering the exact point at which young children are close to the developmental capabilities of their parents when it comes to facial recognition and perception skills.

 The psychological science community are divided on their stance on the developmental process of facial recognition and perception process. One group consensus believes that the development of facial recognition and perception is fully completed in young children by the age of five and that any additional advancements in facial perception skills is only caused by memory and attention improvement.  Another belief is that the developmental process of individuals’ facial recognition and perception ability continually increases in brain areas associated with facial perception until the age of up to thirty-two years old.  Dr. Weigelt and her team of researchers conducted their experiment by utilizing a functional MRI in order to effectively study the cognitive processes which occur in the fusiform face area within the temporal lobe of seven-year-old children and adults when they are shown images of peoples faces.

  The specifics of Dr. Weigelt’s research study involved presenting two participant groups a series of six photographic images of people’s faces in close succession; one group composed of seven-year-old children, the other group composed of adults. The participants were presented three types of image sequences of people’s faces within close succession of each other which involved six identical photos in a row for the first sequence, six photos of the same person but the images were different for the second sequence, and six photos of different people for the third sequence. Additionally, Dr. Weigelt was interested in how the habituation effect would impact the young children and adults’ ability of facial recognition and perception. The habituation effect involves brain areas that are confronted with the same stimulus repeatedly respond to the stimulus less strongly each time. The researchers already knew that adults possess a strong habituation effect after being showed six identical pictures in a row so they theorized that if the children displayed a similar habituation effect after being exposed to six identical pictures, it would be certified proof that children’s facial perception abilities were as advanced as adults’. The results of the research study showed that when young children were exposed to six identical photographs of the same individual, they displayed the same habituation effect of their fusiform face area within their brain. Responding less strongly to the same stimulus after repeatedly being exposed to it in the same manner as the adult participants experienced. These results also illustrate that the children’s facial perception skills lined up with the adults facial perception ability when the children were exposed to photos of different people because the facial perception activity within the brain responded similarly to the photographic stimulus. Additionally, the results of the experiment demonstrated that when the young children were exposed to different photographic images of the same person, some of the children displayed a full habituation effect from seeing the same person in different images causing them to accurately perceive the same person in each different image. However, some of the children displayed no habituation effect which caused their facial perception activity within the brain to recognize different people in each image. In conclusion, the researchers finalized that young seven-year-old children’s facial recognition and perception ability is not as advanced and fully developed as adults, even though young children possess the ability to effectively recognize faces.

 Personally, I found this research study extremely interesting because I have studied cognitive, social, and physical development of young children in my previous psychology classes, which has caused me to become fascinated with the facial recognition and perception process that develop within children. I always wondered what allows us as humans to be able to recognize our friends’ or parents faces amidst a large crowd of people. This caused me to wish that the journal article would have focused more on studying how young children are able to perceive their parents faces amidst different environments and crowds of people, rather than concentrating on exposing the young children to repeated visual photographic stimuli of identical or different faces. After reading this article, I want to learn more about the processes of the fusiform face area within the temporal lobe of the human brain and discover exactly how chemical signals in the brain communicate signals that allows individuals to recognize and perceive other peoples faces.