Configural Face Processing Develops more Slowly than Featural Face Processing

Abstract

Expertise in face processing takes many years to develop. To determine the contribution of different face-processing skills to this slow development, we altered a single face so as to create sets of faces designed to measure featural, configural, and contour processing. Within each set, faces differed only in the shape of the eyes and mouth (featural set), only in the spacing of the eyes and mouth (spacing set), or only in the shape of the external contour (contour set). We presented adults, and children aged 6, 8, and 10 years, with pairs of upright and inverted faces and instructed them to indicate whether the two faces were the same or different. Adults showed a larger inversion effect for the spacing set than for the featural and external contour sets, confirming that the spacing set taps configural processing. On the spacing set, all groups of children made more errors than adults. In contrast, on the external contour and featural sets, children at all ages were almost as accurate as adults, with no significant difference beginning at age 6 on the external contour set and beginning at age 10 on the featural set. Overall, the results indicate that adult expertise in configural processing is especially slow to develop.

The development of facial emotion recognition: The role of configural information

“…Thus, the effect is sensitive to configural information, but it does not tell us which one. The lack of correlation with the composite effect in our study would suggest that holistic processing was not involved and would make the second-order relations a good candidate But inverting the face can also disturb the processing of componential information (e.g., Baudouin& Humphreys, 2006;Mondloch et al, 2002), adding complexity to any conclusion. Further studies are needed to explore the various possibilities.…”

Receiver operating characteristic analysis of age-related changes in lineup performance

“…The late maturation hypothesis posits that children do not remember faces as accurately as adults because face processing ability does not fully develop until at least adolescence (see Carey & Diamond, 1977;Mondloch, Le Grand, & Maurer, 2002). Evidence from the basic face processing literature suggests that children's sensitivity may be poorer because they tend to engage in more feature-based rather than configural-based processing (Mondloch, Geldart, Maurer, & Le Grand, 2003: Mondloch, et al, 2002Schwarzer, 2000). The recognition of faces using configural information may not reach adult levels until adolescence (Bruce et al, 2000;Carey, Diamond, & Woods, 1980;Mondloch, et al, 2003: Mondloch, et al, 2002.…”

A cross-syndrome study of the development of holistic face recognition in children with autism, Down syndrome, and Williams syndrome

“…Indeed there has been research suggesting that newborns preferentially orient towards face-like stimuli (e.g., Johnson, Dziurawiec, Ellis, & Morton, 1991), recognising certain properties of faces from birth and distinguishing internal features by about the middle of the first year (see De Haan, 2001, for review). However, the configural processing that characterises adult-like face processing is not observed until late-childhood (Carey & Diamond, 1994;Chung & Thomson, 1995;Mondloch et al, 2002). Relatively few studies have examined the developmental trajectory of holistic processing in typically developing children.…”

“…The trial order was randomised within orientation blocks (part-whole) but the block order was fixed (orientation). In fixing the block order, we followed previous studies that have begun with upright face trials to maximise the ecological validity of the face recognition task, and blocked orientation to allow children to develop recognition strategies for each orientation (e.g., LeGrand et al, 2003;Mondloch et al, 2002;Yovel & Kanwisher, in press). A fixed order of blocks risks confounding orientation effects with order effects in the results, for example, if there is poorer performance on later blocks through tiredness.…”