Title
Infant Discrimination of Faces in Naturalistic Events: Actions Are More Salient Than Faces
Date of this Version
7-1-2008
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Despite the fact that faces are typically seen in the context of dynamic events, there is little research on infants' perception of moving faces. L. E. Bahrick, L. J. Gogate, and I. Ruiz (2002) demonstrated that 5-month-old infants discriminate and remember repetitive actions but not the faces of the women performing the actions. The present research tested an attentional salience explanation for these findings: that dynamic faces are discriminable to infants, but more salient actions compete for attention. Results demonstrated that 5-month-old infants discriminated faces in the context of actions when they had longer familiarization time (Experiment 1) and following habituation to a single person performing 3 different activities (Experiment 2). Further, 7-month-old infants who have had more experience with social events also discriminated faces in the context of actions. Overall, however, discrimination of actions was more robust and occurred earlier in processing time than discrimination of dynamic faces. These findings support an attentional salience hypothesis and indicate that faces are not special in the context of actions in early infancy. © 2008 American Psychological Association.
DOI
10.1037/0012-1649.44.4.983
Recommended Citation
Bahrick, Lorraine E. and Newell, Lisa C., "Infant Discrimination of Faces in Naturalistic Events: Actions Are More Salient Than Faces" (2008). Department of Psychology. 116.
https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/psychology_fac/116