Elsevier

Cognition

Volume 40, Issues 1–2, August 1991, Pages 1-19
Cognition

Newborns' preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its subsequent decline

https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(91)90045-6Get rights and content

Abstract

Goren, Sarty, and Wu (1975) claimed that newborn infants will follow a slowly moving schematic face stimulus with their head and eyes further than they will folow scrambled faces or blank stimuli. Despite the far-reaching theoretical importance of this finding, it has remained controversial and been largely ignored. In Experiment 1 we replicate the basic findings of the study. In Experiment 2 we attempt a second replication in a different maternity hospital, and extend the original findings with evidence suggesting that both the particular configuration of features, and some aspects of the features themselves, are important for preferential tracking in the first hour of life. In Experiment 3 we use a different technique to trace the preferential tracking of faces over the first five months of life. The preferential tracking of faces declines during the second month. The possible causes and consequences of this observation are discussed.

References (41)

  • R. Fantz

    Pattern discrimination and selective attention as determinants of perceptual development from birth

  • R. Fantz et al.

    The predictive value of changes in visual preference in early infancy

  • J. Field et al.

    Infants' orientation to lateral sounds from birth to three months

    Child Development

    (1980)
  • T.M. Field et al.

    Discrimination and imitation of facial expressions by neonates

    Science

    (1982)
  • C.C. Goren et al.

    Visual following and pattern discrimination of face-like stimuli by newborn infants

    Pediatrics

    (1975)
  • R. Haaf et al.

    Infant responses to facelike patterns under fixed-trial and infant-control procedures

    Child Development

    (1983)
  • D.C. Hay et al.

    The human face

  • L.A. Hayes et al.

    Neonatal imitation: Fact or Artifact?

    (1979)
  • G. Horn

    Memory, imprinting and the brain

    (1985)
  • S.W. Jacobson

    Matching behaviour in the young infant

    Child Development

    (1979)
  • Cited by (1013)

    • The subcortex as a trainer for cortical automaticity

      2024, Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences
    • The Emerging Science of Interacting Minds

      2024, Perspectives on Psychological Science
    View all citing articles on Scopus

    We should like to express our thanks to Dr. Lloyd, Miss Hynes, Miss Smith and Miss Archibald at the Aberdeen Maternity Hospital, and Professor Brant and the maternity staff at University College Hospital London for making generous provisions for us to conduct the work reported as Experiments 1 and 2. We also thank Alison Green, Pauline Hopson, Tara Keenan, Julie Phillips and Jon Bartrip for assistance with the collecting of data and scoring of video tapes, and Warwick Smith for designing and maintaining the “moving chair” apparatus involved in Experiment 3. Sue Carey and Annette Karmiloff-Smith provided useful comments on the manuscript. Finally, we wish to thank the subjects and their parents for their co-operation. Mark Johnson is now at Department of Psychology, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890, U.S.A.

    View full text