Naturalistic Face Learning in Infants and Adults
研究了成人和6-12个月婴儿在自然变化条件下学习面孔的注意机制，发现婴儿优先关注面孔区域但易受干扰，导致无法区分新旧面孔。
Everyday face recognition presents a difficult challenge because faces vary naturally in appearance as a result of changes in lighting, expression, viewing angle, and hairstyle. We know little about how humans develop the ability to learn faces despite natural facial variability. In the current study, we provide the first examination of attentional mechanisms underlying adults’ and infants’ learning of naturally varying faces. Adults ( n = 48) and 6- to 12-month-old infants ( n = 48) viewed videos of models reading a storybook; the facial appearance of these models was either high or low in variability. Participants then viewed the learned face paired with a novel face. Infants showed adultlike prioritization of face over nonface regions; both age groups fixated the face region more in the high- than low-variability condition. Overall, however, infants showed less ability to resist contextual distractions during learning, which potentially contributed to their lack of discrimination between the learned and novel faces. Mechanisms underlying face learning across natural variability are discussed.