Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2013 Jan;18(1):134-148.
doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7078.2011.00107.x. Epub 2011 Dec 8.

An eye-tracking investigation of developmental changes in infants' exploration of upright and inverted human faces

Lisa M Oakes, Ann E Ellis

An eye-tracking investigation of developmental changes in infants' exploration of upright and inverted human faces

Lisa M Oakes et al. Infancy. 2013 Jan.

Abstract

We used eye-tracking to examine 4.5- to 12.5-month-old infants' (N = 92) eye-movements during 3-s presentations of upright and inverted faces. Scanning of inverted faces was statistically indistinguishable at 4.5, 6.5, 8, and 12.5 months of age; at each of these ages infants disproportionately scanned the region containing the eyes. Scanning of upright faces changed over this age range. When viewing upright faces, 4.5-month-old and 6.5-month-old infants focused disproportionately on the region containing the eyes, whereas 12.5-month-old and 8-month-old infants distributed looking more broadly, scanning more of the internal area of the faces. These results are consistent with other observed developmental differences in face processing, and provide insight into how moment-to-moment face processing changes during infancy.

Keywords: Face perception; eye-tracking; scanning.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 2
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Acerra F, Burnod Y, de Schonen S. Modelling aspects of face processing in early infancy. Developmental Science. 2002;5:98–117.
    1. Allison T, Puce A, McCarthy G. Social perception from visual cues: Role of the STS region. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 2000;4:267–278. - PubMed
    1. Amso D, Fitzgerald M, Davidow J, Gilhooly T, Tottenham N. Visual Exploration Strategies and the Development of Infants' Facial Emotion Discrimination. Frontiers in Psychology. 2010;1:180. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bhatt RS, Bertin E, Hayden A, Reed A. Face processing in infancy: Developmental changes in the use of different kinds of relational information. Child Development. 2005;76:169–181. - PubMed
    1. Carey S, Diamond R. From piecemeal to configurational representation of faces. Science. 1977;195:312–314. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources