Department of Psychology and Center for Neuroscience and Behavior, American University, Washington, DC, USA.
Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA.
Neuropsychologia. 2021 Jun 18;156:107838. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.107838. Epub 2021 Mar 26.
Adults exhibit relative behavioral difficulties in processing inanimate, artificial faces compared to real human faces, with implications for using artificial faces in research and designing artificial social agents. However, the developmental trajectory of inanimate face perception is unknown. To address this gap, we used electroencephalography to investigate inanimate faces processing in cross-sectional groups of 5-10-year-old children and adults. A face inversion manipulation was used to test whether face animacy processing relies on expert face processing strategies. Groups of 5-7-year-olds (N = 18), 8-10-year-olds (N = 18), and adults (N = 16) watched pictures of real or doll faces presented in an upright or inverted orientation. Analyses of event-related potentials revealed larger N170 amplitudes in response to doll faces, irrespective of age group or face orientation. Thus, the N170 is sensitive to face animacy by 5-7 years of age, but such sensitivity may not reflect high-level, expert face processing. Multivariate pattern analyses of the EEG signal additionally assessed whether animacy information could be reliably extracted during face processing. Face orientation, but not face animacy, could be reliably decoded from occipitotemporal channels in children and adults. Face animacy could be decoded from whole scalp channels in adults, but not children. Together, these results suggest that 5-10-year-old children exhibit some sensitivity to face animacy over occipitotemporal regions that is comparable to adults.
成年人在处理无生命的、人为的面孔时表现出相对的行为困难，这对在研究和设计人工社交代理中使用人工面孔有影响。然而，无生命面孔感知的发展轨迹是未知的。为了解决这个差距，我们使用脑电图技术在 5-10 岁儿童和成年人的横断面组中研究无生命面孔处理。我们使用面孔反转操作来测试无生命面孔的生动性处理是否依赖于专家面孔处理策略。5-7 岁组（N=18）、8-10 岁组（N=18）和成年组（N=16）观看了真人或玩偶面孔的直立或倒置图片。事件相关电位分析显示，无论年龄组或面孔方向如何，对玩偶面孔的 N170 振幅都较大。因此，N170 对面孔生动性的敏感性在 5-7 岁时就已经存在，但这种敏感性可能并不反映高级的、专家级的面孔处理。脑电图信号的多变量模式分析还评估了在面孔处理过程中是否可以可靠地提取生动性信息。在儿童和成年人中，面孔方向而不是面孔生动性可以从枕颞通道中可靠地解码。在成年人中，面孔生动性可以从整个头皮通道中解码，但在儿童中则不能。总之，这些结果表明，5-10 岁的儿童在枕颞区域对面孔生动性表现出一定的敏感性，这与成年人相当。
