During the first year of life face discrimination abilities narrow toward adult human faces of the most frequently encountered ethnic group/s. Earlier studies showed that perceptual learning under laboratory-training protocols can modulate this narrowing process. Here we investigated whether natural experience acquired in everyday settings with an older sibling's face can shape the trajectory of perceptual narrowing towards adult faces. Using an infant-controlled habituation procedure we measured discrimination of adult (Experiment 1) and child faces (Experiment 2) in 3- and 9- month-old infants with and without a child sibling. Discrimination of adult faces was observed for infants at both ages, although accompanied by posthabituation preferences in opposite directions, whereas at both ages the discrimination of child faces critically depended on sibling experience. These results provide the first evidence that natural experience acquired with siblings affects the tuning properties of infant face representation.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.