Abstract
An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that even newborn infants have the ability to recognize faces they have seen previously. Here, findings on recognition memory for faces during infancy were reviewed. First, the findings in newborn infants were summarized, including memory both for personally familiar faces (e.g., their own mother’s face) and unfamiliar faces. Recent findings suggest that the differential pattern of preference between mother’s face recognition and unfamiliar face recognition is due to the difference in the stimulus characteristics during the familiarization phase. Second, the total looking time during the habituation/familiarization phase were examined, which enabled infants to recognize faces in various previous studies. This examination revealed a clear developmental trend that the looking time during the learning phase decreased within a few months after birth for studies using the familiarization method. On the other hand, there was no clear trend across the studies using the infant-controlled habituation method. Although studies using looking time measures suggest exposure to a face for at least several seconds is required for successful face recognition, studies using nonbehavioral measures suggest the possibility that infants recognize face seen only for less than a second. Finally, the findings on long-term memory for faces during infancy were summarized. Although studies on this topic are relatively scarce, a few existing findings suggest that facial memory acquired in the latter half of the first year could be retained for a year or longer.
References
Bahrick LE, Gogate LJ, Ruiz I (2002) Attention and memory for faces and actions in infancy: the salience of actions over faces in dynamic events. Child Dev 73(6):1629–1643
Bahrick LE, Lickliter R, Castellanos I (2013) The development of face perception in infancy: intersensory interference and Unimodal visual facilitation. Dev Psychol 49(10):1919–1930
Barrera ME, Maurer D (1981) Recognition of mother’s photographed face by the three-month-old infant. Child Dev 52(2):714–716
Bauer PJ (2013) The development of forgetting: childhood amnesia. In: Bauer PJ, Fivush (eds) The Wiley-Blackwell handbook on the development of children’s memory. Wiley-Blackwell, West Sussex, pp 519–544
Bornstein MH, Arterberry ME, Mash C (2004) Long-term memory for an emotional interpersonal interaction occurring at 5 months of age. Infancy 6(3):407–416
Bulf H, Turati C (2010) The role of rigid motion in newborns’ face recognition. Vis Cogn 18(4):504–512
Bulf H, Valenza E, Turati C (2013) How a hat may affect 3-month-olds’ recognition of a face: an eye-tracking study. PLoS One 8(12):e82839
Bushnell IWR (2001) Mother’s face recognition in newborn infants: learning and memory. Infant Child Dev 10(1–2):67–74
Bushnell IWR (2003) Newborn face recognition. In: Pascalis O, Slater A (eds) The development of face processing in infancy and early childhood current perspectives. Nova Science Pub Inc, New York, pp 41–53
Bushnell IWR, Sai F, Mullin JT (1989) Neonatal recognition of the mother’s face. Br J Dev Psychobiol 7(1):3–15
Chien SH, Wang JF, Huang TR (2016) Developing the own-race advantage in 4-, 6-, and 9-month-old Taiwanese infants: a perceptual learning perspective. Front Psychol 7:1606
Colombo J, Shaddy DJ, Richman WA, Maikranz JM, Blaga OM (2004) The developmental course of habituation in infancy and preschool outcome. Infancy 5(1):1–38
Coulon M, Guellai B, Streri A (2011) Recognition of unfamiliar talking faces at birth. Int J Behav Dev 35(3):282–287
De Haan M, Johnson MH, Maurer D, Perrett DI (2001) Recognition of individual faces and average face prototypes by 1- and 3-month-old infants. Cogn Dev 16(2):659–678
De Heering A, Turati C, Rossion B, Bulf H, Goffaux V, Simion F (2008) Newborns’ face recognition is based on spatial frequencies below 0.5 cycles per degree. Cognition 106(1):444–454
Fagan JF (1976) Infants’ recognition of invariant features of faces. Child Dev 47(3):627–638
Farroni T, Massaccesic S, Menona E, Johnson MH (2007) Direct gaze modulates face recognition in young infants. Cognition 102(3):396–404
Field TM, Cohen D, Gracia R, Greenberg R (1984) Mother-stranger face discrimination by the newborn. Infant Behav Dev 7(1):19–25
Gava L, Valenza E, Turati C, de Schonen S (2008) Effect of partial occlusion on newborns’ face preference and recognition. Dev Sci 11(4):563–574
Gross C, Schwarzer G (2010) Face recognition across varying poses in 7-and 9-month-old infants: I role of facial expression. Int J Behav Dev 34(5):417–426
Guellai B, Coulon M, Streri A (2011) The role of motion and speech in face recognition at birth. Vis Cogn 19(9):1212–1233
Guellai B, Mersad K, Streri A (2015) Suprasegmental information affects processing of talking faces at birth. Infant Behav Dev 38:11–19
Hayne H (2007) Infant memory development. In: Oakes LM, Bauer PJ (eds) Short- and long-term memory in infancy and early childhood: first steps toward remembering. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 209–239
Hayne H, Jack F (2011) Childhood amnesia. Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci 2(2):136–145
Kelly DJ, Quinn PC, Slater AM, Lee K, Ge L, Pascalis O (2007) The other-race effect develops during infancy: evidence of perceptual narrowing. Psychol Sci 18(12):1084–1089
Kelly DJ, Liu SY, Lee K, Quinn PC, Pascalis O, Slater AM, Ge LZ (2009) Development of the other-race effect during infancy: evidence toward universality? J Exp Child Psychol 104(1):105–114
Kingo OS, Staugaard SR, Krojgaard P (2014) Three-year-olds’ memory for a person met only once at the age of 12 months: very long-term memory revealed by a late-manifesting novelty preference. Conscious Cogn 24:49–56
Kobayashi M, Otsuka Y, Nakato E, Kanazawa S, Yamaguchi MK, Kakigi R (2011) Do infants represent the face in a viewpoint-invariant manner? Neural adaptation study as measured by near-infrared spectroscopy. Front Hum Neurosci 5:153
Kobayashi M, Otsuka Y, Kanazawa S, Yamaguchi MK, Kakigi R (2012) Size-invariant representation of face in infant brain: an fNIRS-adaptation study. Neuroreport 23(17):984–988
Lee K, Anzures G, Quinn PC, Pascalis O, Slater A (2011) Development of face processing expertise. In: Calder GRAJ, Johnson MH, Haxby JV (eds) The Oxford handbook of face perception. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 753–778
Leo I, Simion F (2009) Face processing at birth: a Thatcher illusion study. Dev Sci 12(3):492–498
Liu S, Xiao NG, Quinn PC, Zhu D, Ge L, Pascalis O, Lee K (2015) Asian infants show preference for own-race but not other-race female faces: the role of infant caregiving arrangements. Front Psychol 6:593
Lukowski AF, Bauer PJ (2014) Long-term memory in infancy and early childhood. In: Bauer PJ, Fivush R (eds) The Wiley handbook on the development of children’s memory. Wiley, Chichester, pp 230–254
Macchi Cassia V, Bulf H, Quadrelli E, Proietti V (2014) Age-related face processing bias in infancy: evidence of perceptual narrowing for adult faces. Dev Psychobiol 56(2):238–248
Otsuka Y (2014) Face recognition in infants: a review of behavioral and near-infrared spectroscopic studies. Jpn Psychol Res 56(1):76–90
Otsuka Y, Konishi Y, Yamagushi MK, Kanazawa S, Abdi H, O’Toole AJ (2009) Recognition of moving and static faces by young infants. Child Dev 80(4):1259–1271
Otsuka Y, Motoyoshi I, Hill H, Kobayashi M, Kanazawa S, Yamagushi MK (2013) Eye contrast polarity is critical for face recognition by infants. J Exp Child Psychol 115(3):598–606
Pascalis O, de Schonen S (1994) Recognition memory in 3- to 4-day-old human neonates. Neuroreport 5(14):1721–1724
Pascalis O, de Schonen S, Morton J, Deruelle C, Fabregrenet M (1995) Mothers face recognition by neonates – a replication and an extension. Infant Behav Dev 18(1):79–85
Pascalis O, de Haan M, Nelson CA, de Schonen S (1998) Long-term recognition memory for faces assessed by visual paired comparison in 3- and 6-month-old infants. J Exp Psychol-Learn Mem Cogn 24(1):249–260
Pascalis O, de Haan M, Nelson CA (2002) Is face processing species-specific during the first year of life? Science 296(5571):1321–1323
Peykrjou S, Pauen S, Hoehl S (2015) 9-month-old infants recognize individual unfamiliar faces in a rapid repetition ERP paradigm. Infancy 21(3):288–311
Quinn PC, Tanaka JW (2009) Infants’ processing of featural and configural information in the upper and lower halves of the face. Infancy 14(4):474–487
Quinn PC, Yahr J, Kuhn A, Slater AM, Pascalis O (2002) Representation of the gender of human faces by infants: a preference for female. Perception 31(9):1109–1121
Quinn PC, Uttley L, Lee K, Gibson A, Smith M, Slater AM, Pascalis O (2008) Infant preference for female faces occurs for same- but not other-race faces. J Neuropsychol 2(1):15–26
Richards JE (1997) Effects of attention on infants’ preference for briefly exposed visual stimuli in the paired comparison recognition-memory paradigm. Dev Psychol 33(1):22–31
Righi G, Westerlund A, Congdon EL, Troller-Renfree S, Nelson CA (2014) Infants’ experience-dependent processing of male and female faces: insights from eye tracking and event-related potentials. Dev Cogn Neurosci 8:144–152
Roder BJ, Bushnell EW, Sasseville AM (2000) Infants’ preferences for familiarity and novelty during the course of visual processing. Infancy 1(4):491–507
Rose SA, Gottfried AW, Melloy-Carminar P, Bridger WH (1982) Familiarity and novelty preferences in infant recognition memory: implications for information processing. Dev Psychol 18(5):704–713
Rose SA, Jankowski JJ, Feldman JF (2002a) Speed of processing and face recognition at 7 and 12 months. Infancy 3(4):435–455
Rose SA, Feldman JF, Jankowski JJ (2002b) Processing speed in the 1st year of life: a longitudinal study of preterm and full-term infants. Dev Psychol 38(6):895–902
Rose SA, Feldman J, Jankowski JJ (2007) Developmental aspects of visual recognition memory in infancy. In: Bauer PJ, Oakes LM (eds) Short- and long-term memory in infancy and early childhood: taking the first steps toward remembering. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 153–178
Sai FZ (2005) The role of the mother’s voice in developing mother’s face preference: evidence for intermodal perception at birth. Infant Child Dev 14(1):29–50
Sangrigoli S, de Schonen S (2004) Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants. J Child Psychol Psychiatry 45(7):1219–1227
Simion F, Di Giorgio E (2015) Face perception and processing in early infancy: inborn predispositions and developmental changes. Front Psychol 6:969
Turati C, Sangrigoli S, Ruel J, de Schonen S (2004) Evidence of the face inversion effect in 4-month-old infants. Infancy 6(2):275–297
Turati C, Macchi Cassia V, Simion F, Leo I (2006) Newborns’ face recognition: role of inner and outer facial features. Child Dev 77(2):297–311
Turati C, Bulf H, Simion F (2008) Newborns’ face recognition over changes in viewpoint. Cognition 106(3):1300–1321
Turati C, Di Giorgio E, Bardi L, Simion F (2010) Holistic face processing in newborns, 3-month-old infants, and adults: evidence from the composite face effect. Child Dev 81(6):1894–1905
Tyrrell DJ, Anderson JT, Clubb M, Bradbury A (1987) Infant’s recognition of the correspondence between photographs and caricatures of human faces. Bull Psychon Soc 25(1):41–43
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Japan KK
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Otsuka, Y. (2017). Development of Recognition Memory for Faces During Infancy. In: Tsukiura, T., Umeda, S. (eds) Memory in a Social Context. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56591-8_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-56591-8_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Tokyo
Print ISBN: 978-4-431-56589-5
Online ISBN: 978-4-431-56591-8
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)