Visual Perceptual Abilities at Birth: Implications for Face Perception

Abstract

The face is one of the most complex stimuli experienced by the human infant. It displays complex types of movement, is three-dimensional, contains areas of high contrast, contains features that appear in invariant and changing spatial relationships both within and across faces, and provides both visual and auditory stimulation. The newborn infant's ability to detect and respond to the visually-specified characteristics of the face are reviewed, with a view to asking whether there is an innate predisposition to respond to the face other than as a collection of salient stimuli.