Innate Face Mechanism

A child develops through its whole life. They can develop; physically, linguistically, intellectually, socially and behaviourally. “Physical development is the way in which the body increases in skill and becomes more complex in its performance” [Meggitt, 2000, Page 2]. Twenty five days after conception; the body of the chid has developed immensely from the small fertilised egg. Up to birth the foetus mainly develops physically however once the child is born the child then begins the long process of development. Not only do the gross motor skills and the fine motor skills develop on the baby, but the sensory development also widens on the child.

Between 6-9 months the baby’s brain will start to develop faster and faster at any other time during their life. Their memory will become quite strong they will repeat things over and over again. They will also learn what they are hearing which could be songs or rhymes or whilst they are being spoken to by parents siblings or strangers.

The physical development of a baby in its first six months of life shows limited range of movement but the beginnings of an ability to respond to stimulus around them. They show their reaction to people, sounds and movement by turning their head toward whatever attracts their attention. They will watch an adult’s face whilst feeding, but have already begun to shows signs of recognition as they will smile when familiar people are around them either because they can see them

In Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s talk, she discusses infants and the presence of alloparents in combination with their parents. Hrdy states that human infants fall behind other apes in physical development, but are able to monitor others and assess their intentions from a very young age. I find this interesting because often human infants are only compared to other human infants in regards to if they can hold eye contact and if they understand facial expression. When human infants are compared to other nonhuman infant primates, there is a vast difference of what human infants can be successful at. It is also interesting to note that human infants get significantly better at recognizing their mother’s face as they get older, where chimpanzees get worse at recognizing their mothers face as they get older.

In this particular case study, an eight year old child named Al, was diagnosed with Prosopagnosia. The analysis cultivated that Al was unable to achieve perceptions of faces for both

Prosopagnosia is a condition where a person cannot recognise familiar faces, but only the features, not the whole face. The condition contradicts the model as it suggests that the process are most likely not separate. As most patients had severe problems with facial expression as well as facial identity, this suggests they are processed separately. The model can also be seen as reductionist, as it only gives a vague description of what the cognitive system does. However, there is research that does support the concept that there are two are separate paths for processing face recognition and facial expression. One being Humphreys, Avidan, and Behrmann (2007) who studied three participants with developmental prosopagnosia. All three had poor ability to recognise faces, but their ability to recognise facial expressions was similar to that of healthy

In adults, three variables were used to test the other-race effect on facial recognition: orientation, face type and ethnicity. Adults at least 18 years of age and older (N = 64) were asked to recognize upright and inverted adult and infant faces. Recognition was tested using a forced-choice procedure. 4 slides were shown during a trial to make sure participants understood the instructions. Next, participants viewed 48 slides with faces alternating between adult female and infant faces; first segment each face was upright, second segment faces were inverted. The results of the study found that there was no significance between race and facial recognition. Other research conducted has shown that race does in fact have a significant effect on facial recognition.

The most modern evidence comes from neuroimaging. The N170 ERP was instrumental in highlighting brain activation when viewing face stimuli. The activation patterns helped to locate the fusiform face area (FFA) because N170 was so distinct to faces. In this essay the fMRI research into the FFA will be explored in detail. To prove faces are special, the research aimed to find a correlation between distinct face-processing brain activity and a specific brain region. The FFA was discovered in 1997 by Kanwisher. It was first described as a brain region which only responded to faces. In fact, activation was found for cat faces and cartoon faces (Tong et al, 2000). There was also some very low level activation to animals, houses and

Processing faces is extremely important to humans as social beings. We are able to put and identity on thousands of faces (Gazzaniga, 2002) with ease, something we might take for granted. The value of this ability can be better understood when the world is viewed through the eyes of somebody with prosopagnosia, the inability to recognise faces. The following quotation from David Fine, a prosopagnosic describing the difficulty associated with the disorder.

this time, the baby's heart is beating, major organs are formed and maturing, facial features are

Overly, the model provides coherent explanation of many kind of information about faces and how they relate to each other. It provides evidence about significant differences in processing of familiar and unfamiliar faces. Nonetheless there are limitations. For instance, there is not enough information about processing unfamiliar faces. Burton et al. (1999)

Some of the highlights obtained about the infant’s cognitive development include how psychological processes are involved in the development of thinking and knowing in young children. The cognitive development of children shows how infants acquire information through the senses of sound, sight, touch, smell, taste, and language. Regarding social and emotional development, it shows how infants learn to interact and control their emotions. Interesting theorists such as Piaget provided a basis for the observation of children’s behavior in motor and intellectual development. Also, Erik Erikson is notable for his interests in the emotional development of children (Newman and Newman). Notable milestones in cognitive development include the sensorimotor

The development of a child in the first year of life is extremely intense; in just 52 weeks’ an infant goes through major physical, cognitive and social and emotional developments.

The first few months of an infant’s life is the most rapid time of growth. They go through physical changes such as their weight doubling in the first five months, then tripling by the age of twelve months. Their height is increased by 50% and their brain doubles in weights. During this time the fontanels become smaller, with the posterior fontanel closing at approximately two months, and the anterior fontanel at twelve months (Crisp & Taylor, 2005, p. 187).

This stage lasts from birth to twelve months. In this stage, infants gain knowledge about their surrounding by using their senses. (Clarke-Stewart, Gruber, & Fitzgerald, 2007, p. 154). They recognize the faces of their caregivers and may respond to smiles. At these stage infants are generally attracted to bright colors, and show response to sound by turning towards the direction of the sound. Studies have indicated that infants between the ages of three and seven weeks have the ability to recognize shapes and pictures of human faces (Goswami, 1994, p. 376).