Simpson Elizabeth A, Varga Krisztina, Frick Janet E, Fragaszy Dorothy
Psychology Department University of Georgia.
Infancy. 2011 May;16(3):318-328. doi: 10.1111/j.1532-7078.2010.00052.x. Epub 2010 Oct 29.
Perceptual narrowing-a phenomenon in which perception is broad from birth, but narrows as a function of experience-has previously been tested with primate faces. In the first 6 months of life, infants can discriminate among individual human and monkey faces. Though the ability to discriminate monkey faces is lost after about 9 months, infants retain human face discrimination, presumably because of their experience with human faces. The current study demonstrates that 4- to 6-month-old infants are able to discriminate nonprimate faces as well. In a visual paired comparison test, 4- to 6-month-old infants (n = 26) looked significantly longer at novel sheep (Ovis aries) faces, compared to a familiar sheep face (p = .017), while 9- to 11-month-olds (n = 26) showed no visual preference, and adults (n = 27) had a familiarity preference (p < .001). Infants' face recognition systems are broadly tuned at birth-not just for primate faces, but for nonprimate faces as well-allowing infants to become specialists in recognizing the types of faces encountered in their first year of life.
知觉窄化——一种出生时知觉宽泛，但随经验而变窄的现象——此前已在灵长类动物面部进行过测试。在生命的头6个月里，婴儿能够区分人类个体和猴子的面孔。虽然辨别猴子面孔的能力在大约9个月后丧失，但婴儿仍保留辨别人类面孔的能力，大概是因为他们对人类面孔有过体验。当前的研究表明，4至6个月大的婴儿也能够辨别非灵长类动物的面孔。在一项视觉配对比较测试中，与熟悉的绵羊面孔相比，4至6个月大的婴儿（n = 26）对新奇的绵羊（Ovis aries）面孔注视的时间明显更长（p = 0.017），而9至11个月大的婴儿（n = 26）没有表现出视觉偏好，成年人（n = 27）则有熟悉度偏好（p < 0.001）。婴儿的面部识别系统在出生时具有广泛的适应性——不仅适用于灵长类动物的面孔，也适用于非灵长类动物的面孔——使婴儿能够成为识别其出生后第一年中所遇到面孔类型的专家。
