Face Perception

Abstract

Since the beginning of the 21st century, developmental psychologists have discovered that face perception undergoes many changes early in life and that experience plays a key role in how face perception is formed. Possibly the most dramatic changes in face perception occur in the first year of life. Newborns enter the world with a bias toward looking at faces. As their visual system matures and they gain more experiences with faces, significant developmental changes take place in face recognition and face processing. Infants' face perception system becomes more fine‐tuned for the types of faces they see most often in their everyday lives, typically female, upright, own‐race faces. Experience continues to have an influence on the development of face perception into childhood.