Why 8-year-olds cannot tell the difference between Steve Martin and Paul Newman: factors contributing to the slow development of sensitivity to the spacing of facial features

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology
Catherine J MondlochDaphne Maurer

Abstract

Children are nearly as sensitive as adults to some cues to facial identity (e.g., differences in the shape of internal features and the external contour), but children are much less sensitive to small differences in the spacing of facial features. To identify factors that contribute to this pattern, we compared 8-year-olds' sensitivity to spacing cues with that of adults under a variety of conditions. In the first two experiments, participants made same/different judgments about faces differing only in the spacing of facial features, with the variations being kept within natural limits. To measure the effect of attention, we reduced the salience of featural information by blurring faces and occluding features (Experiment 1). To measure the role of encoding speed and memory limitations, we presented pairs of faces simultaneously and for an unlimited time (Experiment 2). To determine whether participants' sensitivity would increase when spacing distortions were so extreme as to make the faces grotesque, we manipulated the spacing of features beyond normal limits and asked participants to rate each face on a "bizarreness" scale (Experiment 3). The results from the three experiments indicate that low salience, poor encoding efficie...Continue Reading

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Citations

Jan 25, 2011·Cerebral Cortex·K Suzanne ScherfMarlene Behrmann
Dec 21, 2006·Psychological Science·Catherine J MondlochSara Ahola
Jul 15, 2006·The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America·Frederic WightmanDouglas Brungart
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