TY - JOUR
T1 - Self-face perception in 12-month-old infants
T2 - A study using the morphing technique
AU - Nitta, Hiroshi
AU - Hashiya, Kazuhide
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are extremely grateful to all the infants and parents for participating in the study, and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. The authors also thank Xianwei Meng, Yo Nakawake and Yusuke Uto for suggestions on the data analysis and the manuscript, Kazuki Maeyama, Akiho Yamate, and Reiko Wakafuji for assistance with data collection. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grants No. 17H06382 , No. 18H04200 , No. 19J12635 , No. 19H04431 , No. 19H05591 , and No. 20H01763 . The funders had no involvement in the study design, data collection and analysis, or the research or the decision to submit the article for publication.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2021/2
Y1 - 2021/2
N2 - The present study investigated self-face perception in 12-month-old infants using the morphing technique. Twenty-four 12-month-old infants participated in both the main and control experiments. In the main experiment, we used the participant's own face, an unfamiliar infant's face (age- and gender-matched), and a morphed face comprising 50 % each of the self and unfamiliar faces as stimuli. The control experiment followed the same procedure, except that the self-face was replaced with another unfamiliar face. In both experiments, two of these stimuli were presented side by side on a monitor in each trial, and infants’ fixation duration was measured. Results showed that shorter fixation durations were found for the morphed face compared with the self-face and the unfamiliar face in the main experiment, but there were no significant preferences for any comparisons in the control experiment. The results suggest that 12-month-old infants could detect subtle differences in facial features between the self-face and the other faces, and infants might show less preference for the self-resembling morphed face due to increased processing costs, which can be interpreted using the uncanny valley hypothesis. Overall, representations of the self-face seem to a certain extent to be formed by the end of the first year of life through daily visual experience.
AB - The present study investigated self-face perception in 12-month-old infants using the morphing technique. Twenty-four 12-month-old infants participated in both the main and control experiments. In the main experiment, we used the participant's own face, an unfamiliar infant's face (age- and gender-matched), and a morphed face comprising 50 % each of the self and unfamiliar faces as stimuli. The control experiment followed the same procedure, except that the self-face was replaced with another unfamiliar face. In both experiments, two of these stimuli were presented side by side on a monitor in each trial, and infants’ fixation duration was measured. Results showed that shorter fixation durations were found for the morphed face compared with the self-face and the unfamiliar face in the main experiment, but there were no significant preferences for any comparisons in the control experiment. The results suggest that 12-month-old infants could detect subtle differences in facial features between the self-face and the other faces, and infants might show less preference for the self-resembling morphed face due to increased processing costs, which can be interpreted using the uncanny valley hypothesis. Overall, representations of the self-face seem to a certain extent to be formed by the end of the first year of life through daily visual experience.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.infbeh.2020.101479
DO - 10.1016/j.infbeh.2020.101479
M3 - Article
C2 - 33333429
AN - SCOPUS:85097648817
SN - 0163-6383
VL - 62
JO - Infant Behavior and Development
JF - Infant Behavior and Development
M1 - 101479
ER -