Learning unfamiliar faces in infants: The advantage of the regular sequence presentation and the three-quarter view superiority

Abstract

We investigated the effect of the regular sequence of different views and the three-quarter view effect on the learning of unfamiliar faces by infants. 3-8-month-old infants were familiarized with unfamiliar female faces in either the regular condition (presenting 11 different face views from the frontal view to the left-side profile view in regular order) or the random condition (presenting the same 11 different face views in random order). Following the familiarization, infants were tested with a pair of a familiarized and a novel female face either in a three-quarter (Experiment 1) or in a profile view (Experiment 2). Results showed that only 6-8-month-old infants could identify a familiarized face in the regular condition when they were tested in three-quarter views. In contrast, 6-8-month-old infants showed no significant novelty preference in profile views. The results suggest that the regular sequence of different face views promotes the learning of unfamiliar faces by infants over 6 months old. Moreover, our findings imply that the three-quarter view effect appears in infants. © Japanese Psychological Association 2010.