Facial Recognition and Perception Process in Children
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.
I really enjoyed this article. I think that this study parallels nicely with the "stranger danger" concept that is forced into the minds of young children. Because the recognition and perception ability is not fully formed in young children, could this mean that if a stranger really wanted to, could they dress up like a person the child knows really well and be able to take the child willingly due to them thinking it is a person the child actually knows? I have read before that infants are able to tell their parents' faces apart from strangers fairly quickly. I feel like this counters the article we just read. Is this because the pictures are strangers, and that is why it is hard to tell them apart? Or would children make this mistake when shown pictures of someone they knew well? I feel like more studies need to be conducted in order to find the correlation between the two.
ReplyDeleteThis article was an interesting read. I never really thought about when we start to recognize faces. In another article I read, it talked about how some people are just better than others a recognizing faces. I think this needs to be taken into account when doing the experiment with kids. I also am curious to how children recognize their parents faces better than others. Also, I wonder if other physical characteristics influence how fast someone recognizes a face like someone's hair color or what they are wearing. I'm sure it has an influence but is their more to it then just being accustomed to someone's hair color or style of clothing?
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