Child Development, April 1997

According to a study done by Michelle de Haan and Charles A. Nelson at the University of Minnesota, infants exhibit different neural activity when they are presented with their mother's face versus when they are shown a stranger's face. These findings suggest that infants are able to differentiate between their mother's face and a stranger's face. Furthermore, the research showed that when the stranger's face is similar to the mothe's face, a longer period of neural processing occurs. This suggests "that perceptual analysis/encoding of the stranger's face is more protracted when the stranger's face looks similar to the known face." On the other hand, when the stranger's face is very different from the mother's, it seems the encoding process occurs more quickly.

These findings suggest that some sort of comparison to a known "mother file" stored in memory is occurring when the facial features of the stranger are similar to that of the mother. When a match is not found, then facial processing for the new face occurs, creating a new "file" of information for that face. When the stranger's face is clearly different from the mother's face, however, such a comparison is not necessary, and facial processing occurs immediately.

What issues in cognitive science does this raise? For example, what does it mean in terms of face representations for one face to be similar to another? What features are matched? Are there even features to be matched?

What is the relationship between low-level face processing (mother's or stranger's face as composed of atomic complexes) and ultimate face recognition (mother's vs. stranger's face)? Is this the same relationship as that between low-level ohject processing (edges, surfaces, etc.) and higher-level recognition (it's a pencil!)?