Early Social Cognition Flashcards
Sensitivity to Features of Sentient Beings
Social Cognitive Development is concerned with:
- what do other people believe?
- how will other people behave?
- what are other people’s goals and intentions?
- who is a bad person and who is good?
Piaget argued that young childrens thinking is characterised by egocentrism, which is a difficulty in separating one’s own perspective from that of others.
Therefore, pre-school children often assume that others think or feel or wish.
Subsequent research has shown that Piaget is somewhat underestimated young children’s perspective taking abilities.
The main landmarks in children’s ability to take other people’s perspectives, to socialise, to empathise:
- sensitivity to features of sentient beings (0-12mnths)
- Teoleology and Rationality (9-18mnths)
- Representational Mind (Perspective) (3-5yrs)
- Refined - complex - Introspection (6+yrs)
Sensitivity to Features of Sentient Beings
Neonates Interest In Faces
An interesting aspect of infant social cognition has to do with their reaction to human faces. Infants seem to be drawn to faces from birth. Although infants show a preference for faces over many other stimuli, newborns probably perceive faces quite differently from the way older children and adults do.
For example, newborns prefer a normal faces to scrambled bonds as we will see in the research, although they do not show a preference for normal faces or were highly distorted faces in which eyes are much too far apart or looking almost rabbit like. This suggests that newborns may have some sense of how facial features are laid out, but they have not yet developed a sensitivity to the normal spatial relation between those features.
Faces are salient stimuli to typically developing individuals from the very earliest stages of postnatal development. so faces provide social information on identity, focus of attention, intentions and emotional state during interpersonal communication and specifically eye contact seems to play a major role in children’s social development. Evidence from newborns leads to the conclusion that infants are born with some information about the structure of faces.
Johnson and his colleagues, studied the way newborn infants (median age=37mins) tracked a moving schematic face, scrambled faces or a black outline. Each infant was placed on its back on the experimental slab and surrounded by a large protector over which the stimuli were to be presented against a light coloured ceiling.
As soon as the infant exceeded the stimulus, it was moved by the experiment slowly to one side from 0-90 degrees, the infants eye and head turning in pursuit of the stimulus were recorded. Neonates do appear to track the moving face like pattern further than the pattern with facial features disarranged and both pattern stimuli elicited greater looking behaviour than does headshape with no internal features. The face actually elicited the newborn infants to turn their eyes and their head further as a mean degree of rotation than they did for the scrambled face and even less so full the blank faces.
a follow-up study that controlled for shortcomings of this experiment:
Turati et al. (2001) investigated whether the presence of more elements in the upper part of a configuration (i.e., up-down asymmetry) plays a role in determining newborns’ preference for face-like patterns. [2] Newborns preferred a nonface-like stimulus with more elements in the upper part over a nonface-like stimulus with more elements in the lower part (Experiment 1), did not show a preference for a face-like stimulus over a nonface-like configuration equated for the number of elements in the upper part of the configuration (Experiment 2) and preferred a nonface-like configuration located in the upper portion of the stimulus over a face-like configuration in the lower portion of the pattern (Experiment 3). [3]
Sensitivity to Features of Sentient Beings
What is Crucial?
Main Finding by Turati et al. (2002):
A very general bias toward configurations with more elements in the upper half than in the lower half, something that characterises all human faces. from paying lots of attention to faces, infants very quickly come to recognise and prefer their own mothers face. Although the data suggests that newborns look preferentially towards face like stimuli with features arranged naturally rather than toward face like stimuli with features arranged unnaturally.
Turati et al., (2002) investigated whether the presence of more elements in the upper part of the configuration plays a role in determining newborns preference for face like patterns. Newborns prefer it in non-fixed like stimulus with more elements in the upper part over a non face like stimulus with more elements in the lower part.
Babies prefer any head-shaped figure with more elements in the top than in the lower part.
therefore a critical voice: Can we be sure that babies prefer face-like features?
Farroni et al., (2013) on cortical response was carried out with 70 newborns (24 to 120hrs old) by showing visual and natrualistic dynamic social stimuli, which was the naturalistic dynamic face stimuli such as ‘peek-a-boo’ games and eye movements. This was compared with dynamic, non-biological and mechanical stimuli (e.g. moving clock wheels).
They used head gear that was placed in infants head and wanted to identify how the infants cortex responds to other humans shortly after birth. Newborns were equally attentive to both types of stimuli in both experiments, so there was no significant difference in average looking time. A significant correlation between the age of newborns and the strength of their activation in response to the social stimuli was obtained. No correlation was found with the other stimuli. Therefore, the older the infants were, the more activation they found in response to social stimuli, but this pattern did not show up for the non-social condition. This indicates that grave experience of face to face interaction with caregivers may be required in order to induce the specific cortical activation. The main activation, selective to a dynamic fear stimulus was found or in bilateral posterior temporal cortex.
Gaze at months by Farroni, Johnson and Csibra (2004):
The results from this experiment allows us to conclude that, at least by 4 months, direct gaze enhances face processing even with averted head angles (p. 1322). (researchers could see a more negative amplitude in response to faces with direct, then with averted gaze). there is a cross sectional response in the brain.
The mechanisms of gaze processing at 4 months may be different from those observed earlier in development.
Sensitivity to Features of Sentient (able to perceive or feel things) Beings
PHYSICAL VS. SOCIAL WORLD
Social agents (learn about people and their behaviours):
•Can move on their own
•Can change the direction of their own movement midpath without external influence.
•Causal reactions can be immediate or delayed; means that if you see somebody waving over and you wave back, you can wait for say 5 seconds to do so.
•Influence from afar (“action at distance”) is common.
Inanimate things:
•Require an external force to move
•Only an external force can change their direction of movement midpath.
•Causal reactions tend to be immediate.
•Influence almost always requires direct contact.
Spelke, Phillips, and Woodward (1995) tested whether children know the difference between the physical and social world:
2 conditions - actions at a distance event
- launching event
7mnth old infants were habituated to certain setups so that they would touch B (which is the launching event). they were interested in whether infants would dishabituate at one condition but not the other as a result of being surprised at what they saw.
They showed an event where E had touched B completely and then he moves on as opposed to the action at a distance event where he would stop right in front of B and B moved on. Found the infants dishabituated (i.e. looked longer) at the action at a distance event more than the other one.
Infants did not dishabituate when cylinders were replaced with people.
in the 1st year of life, infants seem to appreciate that objects do not float in midair, that an inadequately supported object will fall, that a non-round object placed on a stable surface will stay put, and so forth. For example, in a series of studies in which infants observed a ball being released on a slope, 7mth olds (but not 5mth olds) looked longer when the ball moved up the slope than when it moved down, indicating that they had expected the ball to go down. They also looked longer at the object that traveled more slowly than one that picked up speed. Infants seem to understand key physical differences between solids and liquids; 5mth olds are surprised when a liquid behaves like a solid when it is poured and vice versa.
infants also gradually come to understand under what conditions one object can support another, suggesting an important role for learning. They learn this as a result of experience; they observe innumerable occasions of adults placing objects on surfaces, and once in a while, they see the consequences of inadequate support. And they collect additional data through their own manipulation of objects, including lots more evidence than their parents would like about what happens when a milk cup is deposited on the very edge of a high-chair tray.
Woodward Paradigm by Woodward (1998)
emphasises the important aspect of social knowledge that evolves relatively early is the understanding that the behaviour of others is purposive and goal directed.
Young infants can distinguish social agents from inanimate objects, for example based on the social agents capacity to respond to action at a distance. Beyond the directly observable difference is between social agents in inanimate objects. some of the most profound differences concern social agents, intentions, schools, and beliefs so we can not observe those. this is the critical aspect that seems to be much more difficult.
Although these distinctions are not measurable, the way to change the trajectory is adults and older children can infer them immediately, so they can infer goals and beliefs. We often make inferences automatically about another persons goals and intentions. The hypothesis was; if the infants simply encoded the physical actions in front of them, they should be more likely to dishabituate the action changed in the hand or stick when going to a new location. found that children looked longer if the person reached for the teddy bear (a particular object); infants even move their eyes to the goal object before the hands get there.
The difference between rich interpretation and weak interpretation (Ruffman):
rich interpretation - infants construe an action as ‘goal directed’
weak interpretation - infants have lots of experience watching people reach for things. Having watched someone reach for an object (with a grasp), they dishabituate to person reaching for a new toy.
How do infants come to understand the intention of others?
one key step is for infants to figure out what kinds of objects can have intentions (agents, behaving like humans). when objects respond contingently, infants are more likely to treat them as agents. Even when observing other humans, infants use cues such as eye gaze and infant-directed speech to determine whether or not to follow the actors gaze. Infants (15mth old) assume that a persona behaviour is based on what the person believes to be true, even if the infant knows that the belief is false.
Sensitivity to Features of Sentient Beings
Connecting Gaze with Action by Phillips, Wellman and Speike (2002)
investigated whether and when infants connect information about an actors affect and perception with their action. infants come to recognise the intentions of others. infants were shown two identical toy kittens with a facial and vocal expression of interest and joy, then a screen was drawn and when the screen opened, the adult was shown holding the kitten A. the infants were then shown two types of test trials; The test (habituation) involved the principle that emotional expression and visual regard predicted directness of the subsequent action. the person looks towards the kitten and grasps it (consistent test event) or she looks towards the kitten but then grasps the other one (inconsistent test event). If 10 children looked longer at the consistent event, they must have done so by chance. Hence, 10 children probably showed the opposite pattern by chance. That leaves 11 children who „understood“ what was going on.
Sensitivity to Features of Sentient Beings
SOCIAL REFERENCING
For example, an unfamiliar and potentially dangerous circumstance, it makes sense to watch the facial expressions and actions of those who know more about this situation. if they panic, your anxiety will likely increase as well.
Studies suggest that infants as young as 7mnths used the facial expressions of others as an important source of information about how to react to ambiguous situation. infants use social referencing as one source of information about whether to cross the transparence surface of the visual cliff. so if mothers look alarmed, then the infant will be much more likely to avoid the deep side of the cliff, while an encouraging mother can often coerse the infant across to the transparence surface.
When the mother looks joyful, the percentage of infants crossing the deep side is about 74%. if the mothers look fearful, non of them crosses the border (by around 12mnths of age).
Sensitivity to Features of Sentient Beings
GOAL ATTRIBUTION TO GEOMETRIC FIGURES
what is it about watching social agent’s actions that trigger infants to attribute goals to them?
are human faces essential?
no longer a popular view because infants will attribute goals to simple geometric shapes after watching them chasing and fleeing. In fact, just the appearance of self-propelled motion in any sort of object can trigger infants to attribute goals to objects.
For example, if an infant watches an animation in which a triangle moves around the screen in a way that suggests it is chasing another triangle, they will dishabituate when the shapes reverse their roles and switches from chasing to fleeing. Indictating that infants recognise that each now has a different goal but even adults attribute goals to simple geometric figures.
overall the more queues there are indicating that something is a social agent, such as action at a distance and self-propelled movement, the easier it is for young infants to infer that a social agent rather than an inanimate object is present.
Teleology and Rationality
Rationality is the quality or state of being reasonable, based on facts or reason.
Teleology holds that – analogous to purpose found in human actions – nature inherently tends definite ends (a goal we are trying to achieve). A thing, process, or action is teleological when it is for the sake of an end, i.e., a telos or final cause.
The combination of rationality and teleology means that if we look at somebody’s actions, we can figure out if they have a goal and we can see whether their actions to reach the goal are rational, given some restraints.
RATIONAL ACTION - Gergely & Csibra (2003):
A goal directed action is represented in terms of some fairly logical interpretation of schema that contains three elements. It contains the observed behaviour, a possible future state and the relevant aspects of the physical reality that constrain possible action.
This schema provides a well-formed, teleological representation only when the observed behaviour can be considered as an effective rational way to bring about the future state given some physical constraints of the particular situation.
- you see the behaviour you observe -
1) you see the yellow small ball jumps over the barrier to reach the red ball; for example, you can infer the action (which was jumping over the obstacle). this is incompatible so once the object is gone we would assume that the yellow ball would just move in a straight line (compatible outcome), it wouldn’t jump (incompatible outcome)
2) how the big yellow ball chases it or tries to catch the small red ball; for example, we can infer the goal (yellow ball wants to catch red ball).
3) see how the small yellow ball jumps over something or jumps behind; for example, we can infer the constraints. we see that behind the occluded, the yellow ball is jumping so we assume that there must be an obstacle behind it. the compatible outcome shows the inference that you do if you assume that the ball is showing rational behaviour. the incompatible outcome would be surprising to see the yellow balls jumping without an obstacle.
Infants apply a non-mentalistic interpretations system to interpret and draw inferences about other’s goal directed actions by linking elements (action, goal and constraints) through the principle of rational action.
Why is this so critical?
big debate on whether children or infants ascribe mental states to other people. there are a lot of findings that suggest children don’t do this until they reached the age of around 4 years. Although there are also a lot of things even younger children can do that is implicative as if they had ascribed mental states to other people. This kind of representation of actions which was developed by Gergely and Csibra actually has the goal to show infants can do a lot without actually ascribing mental states to other people. They can solve a lot of tasks without doing this by just knowing about those three elements and assuming that behaviour is rational so that somebody takes the short way (somebody doesn’t jump without an obstacle).
HABITUATION PARADIGM ‘ACTION’ - Gergely, Nádasdy, Csibra, Bíró (1995):
In this experiment the infants were actually habituated to either the experimental condition where the yellow ball jumps over the obstacle to reach the red ball or the control condition where they were happy to the yellow ball jumping anyway. there is an obstacle behind the yellow ball but it doesn’t affect the actual jumping, so the ball jumps anyway.
The idea is that once the obstacle is removed what you should see is that in the top row the yellow ball should now move along the path and it would be a new way of motion. i.e. if children looked longer it could be because its a new motion but they should be looking at the old motion of jumping because they should be surprised that the ball jumps without the obstacle.
in the control condition, you should have the opposite prediction, so you were habituated towards a ball jumping without an obstacle in the way.
INFERRING ACTION - Gergely, Nádasdy, Csibra, Bíró (1995):
The results showed that -
- Most of the 12mnth old infants looked longer if the old action was presented and they had been habituated to the experimental condition where the ball jumped over the obstacle.
- The 9mnth olds showed less of a significant effect than the 12mth olds
- the 6mth olds didn’t show a difference between the new and old action.
What this suggests is that the 12mth olds indeed were surprised by the balls still jumping even though the obstacle is gone.
Understanding the Mechanisms behind Face Processing in Childhood
Face processing ability in childhood_introduction
Familiar and unfamiliar face recognition:
faces are the most important social stimuli that we are surrounded with throughout our whole life, but there are different mechanisms on how we recognise familiar and unfamiliar faces.
recognising familiar faces is so easy that even bees can do it (Ronacher & Duft, 1996). you can train various animals that normally don’t have the ability to recognise faces, to do that.
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Unfamiliar face recognition (or matching) is more difficult (Johnston and Edmonds, 2009):
•Most research sees this as participant recalling a face unknown prior to the start of an experiment (can learn new faces)
•Can also refer to deciding whether two images are same person or two different people.
•Particularly important in eye-witness recognition and ID matching in adults –usually concerns unfamiliar faces but also for everyday situations
Factors affecting face recognition:
- context
- individual differences in how well others remember faces
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Individual differences
•Some people are extremely poor at recognising faces.
•Bottom end of the face recognition ability distribution
•Developmental prosopagnosia (face blindness)
•Childhood cataracts
•Neurodevelopmental disorders (e.g. ASD).
•Most of us are “in the middle”.
•But… some people seem to never forget a face –super-recognisers (Russell et al., 2009).
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Bobak et al. (2016). Individual Differences findings:
data shows how face recognition distribution looks like for 150 (18-35yr olds) young British adults divided by female and male data. the data shows the frequency distribution; most of us are in the middle while others struggle or excel with face recognition.
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The Bruce and Young (1986) Model (simplified version):
Theory on how we process faces, researchers still use this model.
KEY POINT: Face recognition is a sequential process – if the processing is interrupted at a particular stage, subsequent stages of recognition cannot be completed.
Sequential process -
1) have to detect the face (two eyes, one nose and mouth) which is the expression analysis (processed separately to identity)
2) record the structure of each face (facial speech analysis) (processed separately to identity)
3) more detailed visual analysis
4) face recognition units; person identity nodes leads to name generation or semantic identification units
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Face specific neural model of face recognition (Haxby, Hoffman, & Gobbini, 2000):
CORE SYSTEM - VISUAL ANALYSIS
1) Early perception of facial features occurs in the inferior occiptal gyri
2) superior temporal sulcus is responsible for changeable aspects of face perception of eye gaze, expression and lip movement
2) Lateral fusiform gyrus seems to process invariant aspects of faces - perception of unique identity
EXTENDED SYSTEM - FURTHER PROCESSING IN CONCERT WITH OTHER NEURAL SYSTEMS
linked to superior temporal sulcus
3)intraparietal sulcus - spatially directed attention
3) auditory cortex - prelexical speech perception
3) amygdala, insula, limbic system - emotion
linked to lateral fusiform gyrus
3) anterior temporal - personal identity, name and biographical information
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KEY POINTS
- Familiar face processing is fast and accurate, but unfamiliar face processing is error-prone.
- There are large individual differences in how well we can process faces.
- The cognitive model of face processing maps well onto the underlying neural structures.
Understanding the Mechanisms behind Face Processing in Childhood
Face processing in infancy
Visual acuity in infancy
•Young infants prefer to look at patterns of high visual contrast; due to poor contrast sensitivity (cant perceive things that are low contrast like adults can). Therefore they have a preference to look at high contrast stimuli, e.g., checker boards (Banks & Dannemiller, 1897).
•The reason for having a preference in high contrast stimuli is the immaturity of the cone cells in the infants’ retina; cone cells are responsible for fine detail and contrast colour perception. In infants, they are spaced 4 times further apart than in adults. In newborns cones catch 2% light in comparison to 65% in adults.
Perception of faces by newborn babies
Frantz (1961)
•Babies prefer patterns to plain shapes
•Infants prefer face-like patterns over scrambled faces
•Problems with the stimuli? very early on the comparison stimuli was very plain so it might be that the children preferred top heavy stimuli or some are more busier than others.
Recent study by Von Hofstenet al., 2014
looking at how infants might see faces when they are first born:
The visual system is immature at birth
•Limits on what babies can see
•Problems with fine detail and shading
Adults over exaggerate emotions and speech, which helps the interaction with infants as babies can then perceive a very wide smile as opposed to a smile that is not so wide. due to the fact they don’t have the visual system to deal with suttle emotions.
Visual scanning
•Only at 4 months infants are able to scan moving objects smoothly, if the object is moving slowly (Rosander, 2007).
•Visual scanning = active control over what infants learn. can tell the difference between what is happening in their environment that is important from things that are not so important.
•Before the onset of productive speech, infants fixate on the eyes.
•However, at 4 months when the ‘babbling’ starts, they start paying close attention to the mouth; Bilingual infants show this attentional shift earlier. Early advantage of the information provided by the mouth movement (Pons et al., 2015)
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Clear preferences for faces in newborns
•Moving patterns
•How far does the baby follow the pattern?
•Which pattern does hold the babies attention best?•Infants (some tested minutes after birth) showed clear preferences for face like stimuli.
Johnson, Dziurawiec, Ellis, & Morton, 1991
shows a child a face/scrambled face and how the child perceives a pattern and how long they are engaged. The results show that the longest engagement was for the boards that look like faces which is evidence for an innate preference for facial stimuli in comparison to others.
Implications for being innately responsive to faces:
•Negligible for short-term survival; a baby couldn’t defend itself or run.
•Parents look after offspring for a while. much longer for other mammals
•Engagement with the social world.
•Strengthening of parent-infant bonds; carers think the baby ‘likes’ them.
Important for humans as a species with long-term period of infant dependence.
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Morton and Johnson, 1991 –theory of neonatal competence in face perception
•Similar to imprinting in birds; birds tend to follow the first person/caregiver they see.
•Two-process theory
•CONSPEC
- Innate predisposition to faces
- Guides neonate’s attention
- Provides information supporting learning
•CONLEARN
- Leaning about the visual characteristics of conspecifics
- Ostensibly does not operate in first two months of life (but see Brushnell, 2003 –learning of mother’s face in first days of life)
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Perceptual narrowing
•Face recognition skills in infancy become attuned to the kinds of faces the infant sees regularly (Nelson, 2001)
•6 and 9 month infants can both recognise unfamiliar faces (previously seen)
•6 month (but not 9 month!) infants can also recognise faces of macaque monkeys
•Tuning in to relevant differences
•Babes develop expertise for human and own ethnicity faces in the first year of life (Kelly et al., 2007)
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Key points:
•Infants visual system develops in the first few months of life.
•Preference for face like stimuli and configuration.
•Faces are particularly important for infant-caregiver interaction.
•Perceptual narrowing.
Understanding the Mechanisms behind Face Processing in Childhood
Face processing ability in development
Two theories on how our face processing ability maturates:
1) General Cognitive development theory:
States that perceptual coding of faces is developed early. the system reaches maturity at maximum 5 years of age. Further improvements in laboratory tasks are due to -
•Task: ability to focus, ability to use task strategies
•General perceptual development: e.g., judging distances between features
Children may be distractible, fail to attend to the task –resulting in low accuracy and slower reaction times.
THIS THEORY IS INDEPENDENT OF FACE-SPECIFIC ABILITY DEVELOPMENT
2) Face –specific perceptual development theory (Carey and Diamond, 1977)
•Face processing reaches peak adult performance late because; Face perception mechanisms continue to develop into late childhood and adolescence. The cause of this development is an on-going experience with faces.
•Four mechanisms which may develop
- Ability to encode novel faces
- Holistic processing
- Face space coding
- Development of the neural mechanisms (e.g., the FFA)
However, there are some accounts that state that face processing maturates late…
Face recognition ability reaches its peak around 30 years of age. Age seems to correlate with how well people recognise faces (Susiloet al., 2013).
Mckone et al
at around 5yrs old, most of them are developed. At the age of 6, they cant recognise paraphernalia (hats, etc.)
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Genetic contributions to face processing:
we usually test this through twin studies, the correlation between twins and how well they recognise faces and score on various indicators of face-specific processing such as inversion, the composite effect and the consistency effect are actually much stronger in monozygotic twins suggesting that there is a genetic contribution. Zhu et al., 2010
•May be related to holistic processing
•facial recognition has no correlation with IQ, global processing, perceptual speed.
•Cognitive ‘specialist’ genes
•affecting the face domain.
•More variance explained for older children. •Experience may influence the time course of development rather than the ‘final’ level of ability.
Zhu et al., 2010
•for support for high genetic contribution to FRA (facial recognition ability)
•Low correlations between the FRA and visual and verbal recognition; face-specific mechanisms.
Wilmer et al., 2010.
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Key Points
•Domain-general vs face-specific development.
•Early vs late maturation hypothesis.
•Genetic contributions to face processing ability. •Individual differences in how we process faces.
Understanding the Mechanisms behind Face Processing in Childhood
Face processing ability in childhood_DP and SR
Imagine living in a world without faces…
•Prosopagnosia: loss of memory for faces
•Bodamer (1947): Described 3 soldiers with the condition. Coined the term:
- ‘prosopon’ = Greek for ‘face’
- ‘agnosia’ = non-knowledge
•Rarely, it can be acquired following neurological illness or injury.
•2% of the population are born with a developmental form of prosopagnosia.
Main characteristics of developmental prosopagnosia (DP)
•Deficit in the ability to recognise and perceive faces (both familiar and unfamiliar).
•Often runs within families (e.g. Lee et al., 2009)
•Problems with holistic processing (e.g. DeGutiset al., 2014, but see Duchaine., 2000)
•Intact object processing (Duchaine& Nakayama, 2005)
•Socioemotional difficulties (Yardley et al., 2008)
- Restricted social circle
- Dependence on others
- Avoidance of social situations
Prevalence of childhood prosopagnosia
•Typically prosopagnosia in children has been assessed using a combination of parental report and familiar face recognition tests.
•An alternative approach is to test unfamiliar face processing ability using computerised tasks.
- Less time consuming.
- Easier to develop tasks for groups of participants, rather than individuals.
•How do these measures relate to parental report?
Bennetts et al., 2017; Experiment 1:
•N = 277 children from state schools in South of England
•Age 5 -11
they were asked to do a range of face processing tasks their object counterparts, as it is important to differentiate face recognition from object recognition.
The results suggest some children showed quite big deficits in face processing.
DP prevalence estimate in childhood is roughly between 0.59% and 3.53%, based purely on face memory ability.
Bennetts et al., 2017; Experiment 2:
•N = 477 children from state schools in South of England
•Age 5 -11
ran a face perception test so the children do not have to remember anything but they had to match the face on top two the three faces on the bottom and do the same with bikes. The results shows that correlation of face matching was only significant for the older age groups but not for all of them. so we know from the other population, we ourselves are not good at estimating our own face recognition ability but neither are parents. quite a few of participants had an issue with the perception of faces. DP prevalence estimate of between 1.52% and 4.56%, based purely on face perception ability.
so depending on whether we just look at the memory deficit or the face perception deficit, it actually appears that quite a large percentage of children have problems with recognising faces.
Bennetts et al., 2017; Conclusions
•Surprisingly high percentage of children showing face memory or face perception deficits; which is dangerous in real life situations
•The existing tasks are not suitable for the detection of DP in younger children.
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Superior face recognition: the other side of the coin. •The term ‘super-recognisers’ coined by Russell et al. (2009)
•Several reports of childhood prosopagnosia as early as 4years (e.g., Schmalzlet al., 2008)
•Unclear whether the full face recognition spectrum can be observed prior to adulthood.
•A case study of O.B. –a 14 year old who meets criteria for superior-face recognition.
Superior face recognition in development (Bennetts et al., 2017)
was tested on a range of IQ and basic perceptual measure but also on face specific task, so on a face memory test and face perception test. The results were that not only that the adolescent scored extremely highly on the tests, but also was much better on the face perception test. the researchers also looked at the eye movements the participant and found that O.B. looked much more at the nose than the age-match controls. This is interesting as this was found in other adolescents, so the better someone is, the less they look at the eyes.
Bennetts et al., 2017; Conclusions
• SR is identity-specific enhanced ability
•Individual differences in face processing ability can be apparent relatively early in childhood.
•individual differences are not driven purely by object-processing skills or general cognitive skills, as predicted by the late maturity hypothesis
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Key Points
•Developmental Prosopagnosia and Superior face recognition are the opposite ends of the spectrum.
•The prevalence of DP in childhood might be as high as 4.5%
•Implications for children’s safety.
•Superior face recognition can be detected early in childhood.
