Journal of Undergraduate Research
Keywords
discrimination, monkey faces, perceptual narrowing, infants
College
Family, Home, and Social Sciences
Department
Psychology
Abstract
Experience plays a critical role in the development of infants’ perceptual abilities. Studies have shown that during the early stages of development, about six months of age, infants are capable of discriminating between a large number of faces, including faces from different species or races (Pascalis, 2002). Some time after 6 months of age, infants begin to develop a facial “prototype” according to the various faces towards which they have the most familiarity. While they gain expertise on this particular face type, they lose their generalized ability to discriminate between broad ranges of different faces, a phenomenon known as “perceptual narrowing” (Pascalis, 2002). In support of this claim, Pascalis (2005) found that 6-month-olds, but not 9-month-olds, can discriminate Barbary Macaque faces when given 20 seconds of familiarization and two 5-second comparison (test) trials
Recommended Citation
Magnum, Ross and Flom, Dr. Ross
(2013)
"Twelve-month-olds’ Discrimination of Monkey Faces: Evidence for Perceptual Narrowing?,"
Journal of Undergraduate Research: Vol. 2013:
Iss.
1, Article 517.
Available at:
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jur/vol2013/iss1/517