Recognition involves the ability to identify an individual basing on their facial features and expressions. Recognition is an innate human feature, as Otsuka (2014 p.3) argues that infants possess it. The infants do not require any conditioning to acquire the trait. Nelson (2017) states that face recognition show an experience-expectant process whereby a face that was available at sensitive times of infancy results to cortical specialization. Face recognition results due to neural computations in the brain. The computations utilized in recognizing facial stimuli differ from those used in recognizing non-facial stimuli (p.2).
There are developmental changes in face and visual object perception by a person from birth through to adulthood. The rate, at which recognition ability develops, depends on the amount of experience that the baby is exposed to. Crowding and attention affects the recognition ability of an individual. Crowding pertains to the situation where one lacks the ability to recognize specific objects in a clutter. Attention on the other hand refers to when the mind is captured by a specific phenomenon among many that have the same capacity to possess the mind.
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Preference and Discrimination between Faces
At birth, infants possess the ability to recognize and discriminate between face and non-face configurations (Otsuka, 2014, p.1). This mechanism called first face subcortical, guides the cortical device to acquire information about faces. The infant prefers looking at facial appearances rather than the non-facial objects. Within the first six months of life, faces are seen as a special class of visual objects (Nelson, 2017, p.2). Between 1 and 2 months, the ability to distinguish faces is still fragile and gradually develops at 2 months. The schematized images the newborns are exposed to, presents a challenge to them as on how the images connect to the real faces. An infant can focus attention and distinguish between variation in faces such as face inversion or skin color. The infants prefer looking at upright images compared to the inverted ones even if they possess the same photographic properties.
Otsuka (2014) argues that the newborns prefer upright images that have more elements in their upper parts than on their lower parts, commonly known as “top heavy” stimuli (77). Inborn characteristics as well as exposure to certain experiences aid the brain in becoming specialized in face recognition. The face that an infant encounters has some communicative aspect and leads to an infant’s attachment to a face figure that always seem close at sensitive times. Attraction to pretty faces displaying happiness is stronger than to ugly and fearful faces. The newborn develops more liking to own mother’s face than any other female figure. At this stage the newborn has memory of the mother and can distinguish her from other female figures. The children raised by male figures tend to prefer the male faces to the female ones. Nelson (2017) argues that it is adaptive for the infant to identify possible caregivers and the emotional signals that are transmitted through facial expressions (p.3).
Pertaining to the brain functions, Nelson (2017) states that neuronal activation in the left amygdala is significantly greater to fearful as opposed to happy faces. There is also an increased activation of fusiform gyrus to faces in general (p.3). This indicates that the amygdala plays a major role in determination of facial expression while the regions in and around the fusiform gyrus play a role in facial recognition. Children with brain damage however have limited, or no ability at all, to recognize and distinguish faces and visual images.
In conditions of crowding however, the infant cannot easily distinguish between faces since he or she has weak perceptual assimilation. The newborns’ visual system is immature and is sensitive to spatial frequency and higher level of Gestalt-like properties. According to Nelson (2007, p.22), the infant horizontal stripes to vertical ones. The attention given to face figures is longer than that given to non-facial stimuli. An infant’s concentration, according to Otsuka (2014), is drawn to the face and not the other visual objects and can elicit quick response thereof. The other feature for this behavior is that faces exhibit interesting details to the newborns through movements and manifestation of communication behavior.
Otsuka (2014) states that the baby’s preference to top heavy configurations gradually disappears at the age of three months. He also argues that preference to inverted objects over the top heavy scrambled images is prevalent. At this stage the baby develops liking for schematic faces in equal measure to the human faces. Mooney-like faces that rotate also grab the attention of the child. As the visual acuity increases between 3 and 5 months, the preference to rotating Mooney-like faces shifts to the static ones. When the same image is presented in a different view from the one during habitation, the young infant can recognize it.
Social contact affects the development of face recognition in infants. At 3 months, the infant develops preference to faces of a particular ethnic group that he or she is exposed to from birth according to Otsuka (2014, p.80). For example an Asian newborn who always interacted with Asian caregivers would prefer an Asian face to an African on if the two are presented before him or her. Infants who are exposed to members of different ethnic groups do not show any preference. Between 3 and 5 months, the infant can recognized the same facial image when presented from variety of poses, and inversion. The infants can express same race recognition as well as same gender preference for caregivers at four months. Own race recognition may be driven by the color factor of the used stimuli and the exposure to other species and races. From five months, the face recognition in infants develops more stability. He or she can distinguish human faces as well as those of primates such as monkey.Habituation determines how discriminatory the infant becomes. The earlier he or she is exposed to other races stimuli, the own race preference will not be much intensified (Otsuka, 2014, p.81).
Nelson (2017) postulates, in the brain functioning the infant recognize a face faster if it is initially presented to the left visual field for 6 months and above old baby. The right hemisphere has biasness towards processing of images for an infant just like in adults (p.4). At this stage the infant can distinguish between the caregiver and another person depending on how similar the person is to the caregiver.
At 18 months, the baby’s visual acuity is fully developed. The visual ability is relatively high and can recognize objects that roll back and forth. The children at this stage display relatively larger neurological responses to photographic images of the close caregiver than to anyone else. The child can also point out the image of the caregiver from among many images as well as distinguish between primates and human faces.
Effects of Crowding and Attention to Object Perception and Recognition
Crowding happens at a particular visual area in the brain. Whitney and Levi (n.d), posits that crowding occurs in the cortex and targets to impair one eye. If an infant is presented with many upright facial images then it would be hard to recognize one target face in the clutter (p.16). Crowding destructs the infant and impairs recognition. Crowding effects are more profound in children than adults even if their visual acuity is fully developed. The infant would just have a holistic glimpse of the whole clutter but not settle on any specific figure. If crowding develops abnormally in infancy, it may result in neurodevelopment, visual, and cognitive maladies.
Attention to a target object among a clutter reduces the effect of crowding. A baby of between 18 and 24 months can successfully cue to a particular target among many objects. An infant however, does not possess the ability to pick a specific target object from a clutter. Attention modulates the critical proximity between crowded arrays. James 1890 argues that items in our visual field are generally ignored when attention is not exercised, since attention speeds our psychological response to stimuli (p.1). It requires discrimination of some things so that others can be dealt with effectively.
References
James, W. (1890). Chapter Six: Visual Attention . Springer.
Nelson, C.A. (2017). The Development and Neural Bases of Face Recognition . Institute of Child Development . University of Minnesota , Minneapolis .
Otsuka,Y. (2014).Face Recognition in Infants: A Review of Behavioral and Near-Infrared Spectroscopic Studies.vol 56, No 1 76-90. Japanese Psychological Research. University of New South Wales.
Whitney,D and Levi D.M (n.d). Visual Crowding: A Fundamental on Conscious Perception and Object Recognition. University of California, USA.
