Visual Perception in Infancy
Infant research is often overlooked and unknown by the general public. We tend to think little babies simply have a lot of developing to do. This book particularly focuses on research performed on visual perception in infancy. First, we will read about Robert Fantz' foundational research. Next, we will leap forward about thirty years to Alan Slater's research. Finally, we will learn about findings from research conducted in 2007 by David Kelly and his colleagues.
Robert Fantz made an important discovery in 1963 that advanced the ability of researchers to investigate infants' visual perception: Infants look at different things for different lengths of time.
Fantz placed infants in a "looking chamber," which had two visual displays on the ceiling above the infant's head.
An experimenter viewed the infant's eyes by looking through a peephole.
If the infant was fixating on one of the displays, the experimenter could see the display's reflection in the infant's eyes.
This allowed the experimenter to determine how long the infant looked at each display.
Fantz found that infants only 2 days old look longer at patterned stimuli, such as faces and concentric circles, than at red, white, or yellow discs. Infants 2 to 3 weeks old preferred to look at patterns (a face, a piece of printed matter, or a bull's-eye) longer than at red, yellow, or white discs. The infants also preferred to look at a normal human face rather than one with scrambled features.
Further studies were performed and conclusions were made that the newborn infant actually enters the world with an idea of the human face. And that idea is considerably more detailed than simply three dots in the locations of eyes and a mouth.
This view is supported by findings that newborn infants will track face-like patterns soon after birth, they will prefer to look at attractive faces, they have been found to imitate facial gestures such as mouth opening and tongue protrusion, and they learn to recognize individual faces within hours from birth.
"It is argued that the newborn infant’s representation of the human face is provided by evolution and perhaps also by prenatal learning, and constitutes some sort of prototype from which future learning will develop." - Alan Slater
Alan Slater believes the newborn infant enters the world visually naïve but possesses a number of means with which to make sense of the world. Many basic visual functions, such as visual acuity, are poor at birth but are nevertheless adequate for allowing infants to perceive those objects that are of most relevance to them, i.e., objects that are close to the infant and which interact with him/her.
Size and shape constancy are present at birth, as are other innately provided organizational principles. From these findings it is reasonable to conclude that the newborn infant does not have to learn to see, but of course the newborn does have to learn to make sense of what is seen.
The findings from a different study by Slater and others were that newborn infants appear not to discriminate between attractive and unattractive faces when the internal features of the paired facial stimuli are the same, but that they do make this discrimination when the internal facial features differ (confirming earlier studies). And when the internal facial features differ, the newborn infants prefer attractive faces.
It is of interest to consider how to reconcile these findings that newborn infants do attend to and process internal features of static faces with the finding reported by Pascalis that newborns no longer preferred to look longer at their mother's face when she and a female stranger were wearing headscarves. If a large part of the face is then hidden, such as by a headscarf, this might disrupt recognition of the mother.
The most recent research reported on this matter is from December of 2007. It was conducted by an international group of University professors to determine whether or not infants were aware of other races. Read ahead...
In the study reported here, the researchers investigated how faces observed within the visual environment affect the development of the face-processing system during the 1st year of life.
They assessed 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Caucasian infants' ability to discriminate faces within their own racial group and within three other-race groups (African, Middle Eastern, and Chinese).
The 3-month-old infants demonstrated recognition in all conditions, the 6-month-old infants were able to recognize Caucasian and Chinese faces only, and the 9-month-old infants' recognition was restricted to own-race faces.
The pattern of preferences indicates that the other-race effect is emerging by 6 months of age and is present at 9 months of age. The findings suggest that facial input from the infant's visual environment is crucial for shaping the face-processing system early in infancy, resulting in differential recognition accuracy for faces of different races in adulthood.
In conclusion, visual perception in infancy has been researched and some of the findings are surprising. The research indicates that babies are born with a visual preference towards faces, but actually prefer "attractive" faces. They also are more concerned with the face itself than surrounding features, such as hair or hats. And they are even creating racial preferences as early as six months.
These findings are important to know because they introduce the complexities of the infant brain and the concurrence of nature and nurture in human development. No longer can we assume the visual judgments we make are solely a result of how our environment has influenced us. Considering this research, nature plays a part as well in that we may have been born with preconceived notions toward visual judgments.
References
Kelly, David J., et al. “The Other-Race Effect Develops During Infancy.” Psychological Science. 18.12 (2007): 1084-1089. Web. 10 October 2008.
Santrock, John W. Children. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2007. Print.
Slater, Alan. “Visual perception in the newborn infant: issues and debates.” Intellectica (2002): 57-76. Print.
Slater, Alan, et al. “Newborn Infants’ Preference for Attractive Faces: The Role of Internal and External Facial Features.” Infancy 1.2 (2000): 265-274. Print.