Gaze detection and the cortical processing of faces: Evidence from infants and adults

Abstract Faces, as a class of objects, have been studied extensively in order to understand how the human visual system recognizes and represents objects. In this paper we studied the ontogeny of the ability to perceive gaze direction. We bring together both developmental research and neurophysiological and neuropsychological research in order to address this issue. In two experiments we explored the developmental time course of the ability to discriminate between direct and averted gaze, a task thought to involve cortical information processing of faces. We found that (a) infants as young as four months could discriminate between direct and averted gaze, (b) this ability was not due to the development of low-level visual processes, and (c) younger infants did not show reliable evidence of gaze discrimination. In an additional experiment we tested adults to study the effect of face context on the ability to discriminate gaze direction. Adult subjects were more sensitive in this discrimination when the eye...

[1]  D. Maurer,et al.  Infants' perception of natural and distorted arrangements of a schematic face. , 1981, Child development.

[2]  Martha J. Farah,et al.  Cognitive Neuropsychology: Patterns of Co-occurrence Among the Associative Agnosias: Implications for Visual Object Representation , 1991 .

[3]  G. Butterworth,et al.  What minds have in common is space : Spatial mechanisms serving joint visual attention in infancy , 1991 .

[4]  Mark H. Johnson.  Cortical Maturation and the Development of Visual Attention in Early Infancy , 1990, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[5]  G. Bronson.  The postnatal growth of visual capacity. , 1974, Child development.

[6]  A. Cowey,et al.  Sensitivity to eye gaze in prosopagnosic patients and monkeys with superior temporal sulcus ablation , 1990, Neuropsychologia.

[7]  Mark H. Johnson.  Kin recognition: Information processing and storage during filial imprinting , 1991 .

[8]  M. Harries,et al.  Visual Processing of Faces in Temporal Cortex: Physiological Evidence for a Modular Organization and Possible Anatomical Correlates , 1991, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[9]  A. J. Mistlin,et al.  Visual cells in the temporal cortex sensitive to face view and gaze direction , 1985, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences.

[10]  Attention to eye contact opportunity and facial motion by three-month-old infants. , 1985, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[11]  A. J. Mistlin,et al.  Perception of facial characteristics by monkeys. , 1990 .

[12]  A. Cowey,et al.  Visual discrimination impairments following lesions of the superior temporal sulcus are not specific for facial stimuli , 1993, Neuropsychologia.

[13]  A. Cowey,et al.  The role of the 'face-cell' area in the discrimination and recognition of faces by monkeys. , 1992, Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences.

[14]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Biology and Cognitive Development: The Case of Face Recognition , 1993 .

[15]  Daniel N. Stern,et al.  Mother and infant at play: The dyadic interaction involving facial, vocal, and gaze behaviors. , 1974 .

[16]  K. Maruyama,et al.  The effect of face orientation upon apparent direction of gaze , 1983 .

[17]  G. Rhodes,et al.  The Simon Then Garfunkel Effect: Semantic Priming, Sensitivity, and the Modularity of Face Recognition , 1993, Cognitive Psychology.

[18]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Cortical Parcellation and the Development of Face Processing , 1993 .

[19]  C. C. Goren,et al.  Visual following and pattern discrimination of face-like stimuli by newborn infants. , 1975, Pediatrics.

[20]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  CONSPEC and CONLERN: a two-process theory of infant face recognition. , 1991, Psychological review.

[21]  Leslie B. Cohen,et al.  A Two Process Model of Infant Visual Attention. , 1972 .

[22]  G. Horn.  Memory, imprinting, and the brain : an inquiry into mechanisms , 1985 .

[23]  A. J. Mistlin,et al.  Visual neurones responsive to faces , 1987, Trends in Neurosciences.

[24]  Z. Pylyshyn.  Computation and cognition: issues in the foundations of cognitive science , 1980, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[25]  M. Alibali,et al.  Children's Thinking , 1986 .

[26]  J. Atkinson,et al.  Human visual development over the first 6 months of life. A review and a hypothesis. , 1984, Human neurobiology.

[27]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  Newborns' preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its subsequent decline , 1991, Cognition.

[28]  Mark H. Johnson,et al.  The effects of movement of internal features on infants' preferences for face-like stimuli , 1992 .

[29]  C. Hofsten.  Developmental changes in the organization of prereaching movements , 1984 .

[30]  George Butterworth,et al.  Joint Visual Attention, Manual Pointing, and Preverbal Communication in Human Infancy , 2018, Attention and Performance XIII.

[31]  J. Gibson,et al.  Perception of another person's looking behavior. , 1963, The American journal of psychology.

[32]  S. Anstis,et al.  The perception of where a face or television "portrait" is looking. , 1969, The American journal of psychology.

[33]  D. Maurer,et al.  Developmental changes in the scanning of faces by young infants. , 1976, Child development.

[34]  A. Vinter.  The role of movement in eliciting early imitations , 1986 .

[35]  S. Baron-Cohen.  How to build a baby that can read minds: Cognitive mechanisms in mindreading. , 1994 .

[36]  The Reactions of Five-Month-Old Infants to Eye Contact of the Mother and of a Stranger. , 1979 .

[37]  M. Cline.  The perception of where a person is looking. , 1967, The American journal of psychology.

[38]  D. Homa,et al.  Perceptibility of schematic face stimuli: Evidence for a perceptual Gestalt , 1976, Memory & cognition.

[39]  R. Desimone.  Face-Selective Cells in the Temporal Cortex of Monkeys , 1991, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

[40]  J. Fodor.  The Modularity of mind. An essay on faculty psychology , 1986 .

[41]  A. Karmiloff-Smith.  Précis of Beyond modularity: A developmental perspective on cognitive science , 1994, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[42]  M. Farah.  Is an Object an Object an Object? Cognitive and Neuropsychological Investigations of Domain Specificity in Visual Object Recognition , 1992 .