Hadley Hillary, Pickron Charisse B, Scott Lisa S
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA.
Dev Sci. 2015 Sep;18(5):842-52. doi: 10.1111/desc.12259. Epub 2014 Nov 29.
The capacity to tell the difference between two faces within an infrequently experienced face group (e.g. other species, other race) declines from 6 to 9 months of age unless infants learn to match these faces with individual-level names. Similarly, the use of individual-level labels can also facilitate differentiation of a group of non-face objects (strollers). This early learning leads to increased neural specialization for previously unfamiliar face or object groups. The current investigation aimed to determine whether early conceptual learning between 6 and 9 months leads to sustained behavioral advantages and neural changes in these same children at 4-6 years of age. Results suggest that relative to a control group of children with no previous training and to children with infant category-level naming experience, children with early individual-level training exhibited faster response times to human faces. Further, individual-level training with a face group - but not an object group - led to more adult-like neural responses for human faces. These results suggest that early individual-level learning results in long-lasting process-specific effects, which benefit categories that continue to be perceived and recognized at the individual level (e.g. human faces).
辨别不常见面孔组（如其他物种、其他种族）中两张面孔差异的能力在6至9个月大时会下降，除非婴儿学会将这些面孔与个体层面的名字进行匹配。同样，使用个体层面的标签也有助于区分一组非面孔物体（婴儿车）。这种早期学习会导致对以前不熟悉的面孔或物体组的神经专业化增强。当前的研究旨在确定6至9个月大时的早期概念学习是否会在这些儿童4至6岁时带来持续的行为优势和神经变化。结果表明，相对于没有接受过先前训练的对照组儿童以及有婴儿类别层面命名经验的儿童，接受过早期个体层面训练的儿童对面孔的反应时间更快。此外，对面孔组而非物体组进行个体层面训练会导致对面孔产生更类似成人的神经反应。这些结果表明，早期个体层面的学习会产生持久的特定过程效应，这有利于在个体层面持续被感知和识别的类别（如人类面孔）。
