Nishimura Mayu, Maurer Daphne, Jeffery Linda, Pellicano Elizabeth, Rhodes Gillian
Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Canada.
Dev Sci. 2008 Jul;11(4):620-7. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00706.x.
In adults, facial identity is coded by opponent processes relative to an average face or norm, as evidenced by the face identity aftereffect: adapting to a face biases perception towards the opposite identity, so that a previously neutral face (e.g. the average) resembles the identity of the computationally opposite face. We investigated whether children as young as 8 use adaptive norm-based coding to represent faces, a question of interest because 8-year-olds are less accurate than adults at recognizing faces and do not show the adult neural markers of face expertise. We found comparable face identity aftereffects in 8-year-olds and adults: perception of identity in both groups shifted in the direction predicted by norm-based coding. This finding suggests that, by 8 years of age, the adaptive computational mechanisms used to code facial identity are like those of adults and hence that children's immaturities in face processing arise from another source.
在成年人中，面部识别是通过与平均脸或规范相关的对立过程进行编码的，面部识别后效就证明了这一点：适应一张脸会使对面部识别的感知偏向相反的身份，以至于一张先前中性的脸（如平均脸）看起来像计算上相反的脸的身份。我们研究了年仅8岁的儿童是否使用基于适应性规范的编码来表征面部，这是一个有趣的问题，因为8岁儿童在识别面部方面不如成年人准确，并且没有表现出成年人面部识别专长的神经标志。我们在8岁儿童和成年人中发现了类似的面部识别后效：两组对身份的感知都朝着基于规范编码所预测的方向转变。这一发现表明，到8岁时，用于编码面部识别的适应性计算机制与成年人的相似，因此儿童在面部处理方面的不成熟源于另一个原因。
