Developmental changes in the microgenesis of face perception revealed by effects of context and inversion

AbstractPresent studies on the development of face perception mechanisms are ambiguous about the question of whether holistic face vision arises early, or in the second decade of life (Crookes & McKone, 2009). Measuring the time course of face matching we assess effects of context and inversion as correlates of holistic processing in the microgenesis of face perception within the first 650ms, and compare among 8- to 10-year-old children and adults. Results for adults indicate dominance of holistic viewing at brief timings, which is gradually replaced by feature selective strategies enabling them to selectively attend either internal or external features, as demanded by instruction. For chil…