Perceptual Narrowing in Speech and Face Recognition: Evidence for Intra-individual Cross-Domain Relations

Abstract

During the first year of life, infants undergo perceptual narrowing in the domains of speech and face perception. This is typically characterized by improvements in infants’ abilities in discriminating among stimuli of familiar types, such as native speech tones and same-race faces. Simultaneously, infants begin to decline in their ability to discriminate among stimuli of types with which they have little experience, such as non-native tones and other-race faces. The similarity in time-frames during which perceptual narrowing seems to occur in the domains of speech and face perception has led some researchers to hypothesize that the perceptual narrowing in these domains could be driven by shared domain-general processes. To explore this hypothesis, we tested 53 Caucasian 9-month-old infants from monolingual German households on their ability to discriminate among non-native Cantonese speech tones, as well among same-race German faces and other-race Chinese faces. We tested the infants using an infant-controlled habituation-dishabituation paradigm, with infants’ preferences for looking at novel stimuli versus the habituated stimuli (dishabituation scores) acting as indicators of discrimination ability. As expected for their age, infants were able to discriminate between same-race faces, but not between other-race faces or non-native speech tones. Most interestingly, we found that infants’ dishabituation scores for the non-native speech tones and other-race faces showed significant positive correlations, while the dishabituation scores for non-native speech tones and same-race faces did not. These results therefore support the hypothesis that shared domain-general mechanisms may drive perceptual narrowing in the domains of speech and face perception.

Attention to speaking mouth is reduced by face inversion in infants only from 9 months of age

“…Furthermore, as the effect of inversion was visible in looking towards the mouth region, it suggests that upright face orientation is especially important for speech perception. In line with previous studies [25,26,27,28,38], our results support the notion that both the specialisation for speech and the specialisation for faces are related in infancy.…”

“…First, Minar and Lewkowicz [25] showed that infants aged 10-12 month maintained their ability to discriminate dynamic otherrace faces accompanied by a speech syllable, whereas they did not discriminate between dynamic other-race silent faces or other-race faces accompanied by a non-speech sound. Second, Krasotkina and collaborators [26] found a positive correlation between the ability to discriminate between nonnative tones and other-race faces -infants who were weak at discriminating stimuli in one domain were also weak at discriminating stimuli in the other domain. Third, Xiao and collaborators [27] showed that narrowing in the face and narrowing in speech perception were not correlated at or before 6 months of age, but they were negatively correlated at 9 months and positively correlated at 12 months.…”

The Other-Race-Effect on Audiovisual Speech Integration in Infants: A NIRS Study

“…The timing of emerging narrowing is shared in face perception and speech perception, although the interaction of speed of perceptual narrowing in both domains remains discussed. Recent studies have investigated the correlations between perceptual narrowing in the face and speech domains (e.g., Krasotkina et al, 2018;Xiao et al, 2018). These studies have suggested that the speed of the developmental trajectories of perceptual narrowing in the speech domain is not necessarily correlated with that in the face domain within infants older than 8 months.…”

“…These studies have suggested that the speed of the developmental trajectories of perceptual narrowing in the speech domain is not necessarily correlated with that in the face domain within infants older than 8 months. Whether the narrowing process is driven by modality-general mechanisms (e.g., Pascalis et al, 2002) or by modality-particular mechanisms (e.g., Krasotkina et al, 2018) remains unclear.…”

Language familiarity influences own‐race face recognition in 9‐ and 12‐month‐old infants

“…This question is important as it could radically improve our understanding of how infants adapt so quickly to their social environment, but also of the mechanism at play for face and language processing. Some recent studies suggest that language and face processing systems interact during the first year (Krasotkina et al, 2018;Xiao et al, 2018, see also Pascalis et al, 2014, for a review). Using a within-participant design, Xiao et al (2018) measured 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month-old infants' perceptual discrimination for language (native vs. non-native phonetic contrasts) and individual face recognition (own vs. other-race faces).…”