The cognitive and neural development of face recognition in humans
Abstract
Conventional wisdom has long held that face recognition develops very slowly throughout infancy, childhood, and adolescence, with perceptual experience as the primary engine of this development. However, striking new findings from just the last few years have overturned much of this traditional view by demonstrating genetic influences on the face recognition system as well as impressive face discrimination abilities present in newborns and in monkeys who were reared without ever seeing a face. Nevertheless, experience does play a role, for example in narrowing the range of facial subtypes for which discrimination is possible and perhaps also increasing discrimination abilities within that range. Here we first describe the cognitive and neural characteristics of the adult system for face recognition, and then we chart the development of this system over infancy and childhood. This review identifies a fascinating new puzzle to be targeted in future research: all qualitative aspects of adult face recognition measured behaviorally are present very early in development (by 4 yrs of age; all that have been tested are also present in infancy) – yet fMRI and ERP evidence shows very late maturity of face-selective neural responses (with the fusiform face area increasing substantially in volume between age 7 and adulthood).
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Babies are very much attracted to things with generic features of upright faces starting from birth, and acquire face-specific cortical areas in their first few years of life if not earlier.
“Indeed, we know that babies are very much attracted to things with these generic features of upright faces starting from birth, and that they will acquire face-specific cortical areas38 in their first few years of life if not earlier (McKone et al., 2009).”
From Toward an integration of deep learning and neuroscience (2016) · cites this paper as McKone et al., 2009
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- Authors
- McKone, E., Crookes, K., & Kanwisher, N.
- Affiliations
- Australian National University (AU)
- McGovern Institute for Brain Research (US)
- Venue
- The Cognitive Neurosciences
- Publisher
- The MIT Press
- Published
- 2009-09-18
- OpenAlex
- W184523846
- Cited by
- 77
- References
- 105
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 4 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 6 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 6
- FWCI
- 16.62
- Type
- book chapter
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Cognitive Neurosciences (publishedVersion)
- UWA Profiles and Research Repository (UWA) (submittedVersion)
- ANU Open Research (Australian National University) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Face recognition and analysis
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Keywords
- face recognition (cognition), face recognition development, infancy, childhood, fusiform face area, face-selective neural responses, face discrimination, perceptual experience, neuronal maturation, neonates
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