Faces are special to infants from birth, and experiences with faces in infancy are critical to developing brain circuits that support face processing skills through adulthood. Infants learn to extract rich information from faces, including recognizing people, tracking their gaze and expressions, and lip-reading. As infants learn to interact with the people around them, their responses to and understanding of these communicative facial cues become more connected to their social understanding and reflect their developmental context. Infants’ face perception is particularly responsive to experience, with some degree of plasticity present through middle childhood. Opportunities to interact with people from diverse racial backgrounds in infancy may help prevent perceptual and social biases toward different groups. Variations in experience with faces beyond face race and gender, such as the use of face coverings, may impact how and what infants learn from faces.
AnzuresG.WheelerA.QuinnP. C.PascalisO.SlaterA. M.Heron-DelaneyM.LeeK. (2012). Brief daily exposures to Asian females reverses perceptual narrowing for Asian faces in Caucasian infants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 112(4), 484–495. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2012.04.005
2.
ArcaroM. J.SchadeP. F.VincentJ. L.PonceC. R.LivingstoneM. S. (2017). Seeing faces is necessary for face-domain formation. Nature Neuroscience. 20(10), 1404-1412. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn.4635
BarrickE. M.ThorntonM. A.TamirD. I. (2021). Mask exposure during COVID-19 changes emotional face processing. PLoS One, 16(10), e0258470. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0258470
5.
BayetL.NelsonC. A. (2019). The perception of facial emotion in typical and atypical development. In LobueV.Perez-EdgarK.BussK. A. (Eds.), Handbook of Emotional Development. Springer International Publishing.
6.
BayetL.NelsonC. A. (2020). The neural architecture and developmental course of face processing. In RubensteinJ.RakicP. (Eds.), Neural Circuit Development and Function in the Healthy and Diseased Brain: Comprehensive Developmental Neuroscience Series. Academic Press.
7.
BayetL.PerdueK. L.BehrendtH. F.RichardsJ. E.WesterlundA.CataldoJ. K.NelsonC. A. (2021). Neural responses to happy, fearful and angry faces of varying identities in 5- and 7-month-old infants. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 47, 100882. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100882
8.
BayetL.QuinnP. C.LaboissièreR.CaldaraR.LeeK.PascalisO. (2017). Fearful but not happy expressions boost face detection in human infants. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 284(1862), 20171054. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.1054
9.
BayetL.QuinnP. C.TanakaJ. W.LeeK.GentazÉPascalisO. (2015). Face gender influences the looking preference for smiling expressions in 3.5-month-old human infants. PLoS One, 10(6), e0129812. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0129812
BirulésJ.BoschL.BriekeR.PonsF.LewkowiczD. J. (2019). Inside bilingualism: Language background modulates selective attention to a talker's mouth. Developmental Science, 22(3), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12755
BuiattiM.DiE.PiazzaM.PolloniC.MennaG.TaddeiF.BaldoE. (2019). Cortical route for facelike pattern processing in human newborns. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116(10), 4625-4630. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1812419116
CarnevaliL.GuiA.JonesE. J. H.FarroniT.FarroniT. (2021). Face processing in early development : A systematic review of behavioral studies and considerations in times of COVID-19 pandemic. PsyArxiv (Preprint), 1–65. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/rfnj6
16.
DamonF.QuinnP. C.PascalisO. (2021). When novelty prevails on familiarity: Visual biases for child versus infant faces in 3.5- to 12-month-olds. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 210, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105174
17.
DeenB.RichardsonH.DilksD. D.TakahashiA.KeilB.WaldL. L.SaxeR. (2017). Organization of high-level visual cortex in human infants. Nature Communications, 8(1), 13995. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13995
18.
de HaanM.BelskyJ.ReidV.VoleinA.JohnsonM. H. (2004). Maternal personality and infants’ neural and visual responsivity to facial expressions of emotion. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 45(7), 1209–1218. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004.00320.x
19.
de HeeringA.RossionB. (2015). Rapid categorization of natural face images in the infant right hemisphere. ELife, 4, e06564. . https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.06564
20.
DobkinsK. R.AndersonC. M.LiaB. (1999). Infant temporal contrast sensitivity functions (tCSFs) mature earlier for luminance than for chromatic stimuli: Evidence for precocious magnocellular development?Vision Research, 39(19), 3223–3239. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0042-6989(99)00020-6
21.
DunhamY.ChenE. E.BanajiM. R. (2013). Two signatures of implicit intergroup attitudes: Developmental invariance and early enculturation. Psychological Science, 24(6), 860–868. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612463081
22.
FarroniT.CsibraG.SimionF.JohnsonM. H. (2002). Eye contact detection in humans from birth. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 99(14), 9602–9605. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.152159999
23.
FarroniT.MenonE.RigatoS.JohnsonM. H. (2007). The perception of facial expressions in newborns. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4(1), 2–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405620601046832
24.
FassbenderI.TeubertM.LohausA. (2016). The development of preferences for own-race versus other-race faces in 3-, 6- and 9-month-old Caucasian infants. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 13(1), 152–165. https://doi.org/10.1080/17405629.2015.1073585
GavaL.ValenzaE.TuratiC.SchonenS. D. (2008). Effect of partial occlusion on newborns’ face preference and recognition. Developmental Science, 11(4), 563–574. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2008.00702.x
27.
GeanguE.IchikawaH.LaoJ.KanazawaS.YamaguchiM. K.CaldaraR.TuratiC. (2016). Culture shapes 7-month-olds’ perceptual strategies in discriminating facial expressions of emotion. Current Biology, 26(14), R663–R664. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.05.072
GredebäckG.TheuringC.HaufP.KenwardB. (2008). The microstructure of infants’ gaze as they view adult shifts in overt attention. Infancy, 13(5), 533–543. https://doi.org/10.1080/15250000802329529
30.
GuyM. W.ZieberN.RichardsJ. E. (2016). The cortical development of specialized face processing in infancy. Child Development, 87(5), 1581–1600. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12543
31.
HernikM.BroeschT. (2019). Infant gaze following depends on communicative signals: An eye-tracking study of 5- to 7-month-olds in Vanuatu. Developmental Science, 22(4), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12779
32.
Heron-DelaneyM.AnzuresG.HerbertJ. S.QuinnP. C.SlaterA. M.TanakaJ. W.PascalisO. (2011). Perceptual training prevents the emergence of the other race effect during infancy. PLoS One, 6(5), e19858, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019858
33.
JayaramanS.FauseyC. M.SmithL. B. (2015). The faces in infant-perspective scenes change over the first year of life. PLoS One, 10(5), e0123780. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0123780
34.
JayaramanS.FauseyC. M.SmithL. B. (2017). Why are faces denser in the visual experiences of younger than older infants?Developmental Psychology, 53(1), 38–49. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000230
35.
JessenS.GrossmannT. (2015). Neural signatures of conscious and unconscious emotional face processing in human infants. Cortex, 64, 260–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2014.11.007
36.
JohnsonM. H.SenjuA.TomalskiP. (2015). The two-process theory of face processing: Modifications based on two decades of data from infants and adults. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 50, 169–179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.10.009
37.
KatajaE. L.KarlssonL.LeppänenJ. M.PeltoJ.HäikiöT.NolviS.KarlssonH. (2020). Maternal depressive symptoms during the Pre- and postnatal periods and infant attention to emotional faces. Child Development, 91(2), e475–e480. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13152
38.
KobayashiM.OtsukaY.KanazawaS.YamaguchiM. K.KakigiR. (2014). The processing of faces across non-rigid facial transformation develops at 7 month of age: A fNIRS-adaptation study. BMC Neuroscience, 15, 81. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2202-15-81
39.
KobayashiM.OtsukaY.NakatoE.KanazawaS.YamaguchiM. K.KakigiR. (2011). Do infants represent the face in a viewpoint-invariant manner? Neural adaptation study as measured by near-infrared spectroscopy. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 153. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2011.00153
40.
LeeK.QuinnP. C.PascalisO. (2017). Face race processing and racial bias in early development: A perceptual-social linkage. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 26(3), 256–262. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417690276
41.
LeppänenJ. M.NelsonC. A. (2009). Tuning the developing brain to social signals of emotions. Nature Review Neuroscience, 10(1), 37–47. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2554
42.
LewkowiczD. J. (2003). Learning and discrimination of audiovisual events in human infants: The hierarchical relation between intersensory temporal synchrony and rhythmic pattern cues. Developmental Psychology, 39(5), 795–804. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.39.5.795
43.
LewkowiczD. J.GhazanfarA. A. (2006). The decline of cross-species intersensory perception in human infants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 103(17), 6771–6774. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0602027103
44.
LewkowiczD. J.Hansen-TiftA. M. (2012). Infants deploy selective attention to the mouth of a talking face when learning speech. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109(5), 1431–1436. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1114783109
45.
LiuS.XiaoN. G.QuinnP. C.ZhuD.GeL.PascalisO.LeeK. (2015). Asian infants show preference for own-race but not other-race female faces: The role of infant caregiving arrangements. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 593. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00593
46.
LivingstoneM. S.ArcaroM. J.SchadeP. F. (2019). Cortex is cortex: Ubiquitous principles drive face-domain development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 23(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.10.009
47.
Macchi CassiaV.TuratiC.SimionF. (2004). Can a nonspecific bias toward top-heavy patterns explain newborns’ face preference?Psychological Science, 15(6), 379–383. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00688.x
48.
MarkantJ.ScottL. S. (2018). Attention and perceptual learning interact in the development of the other-race effect. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 27(3), 163–169. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721418769884
49.
MaurerD.LewisT. L.MondlochC. J. (2005). Missing sights: Consequences for visual cognitive development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 9(3), 144–151. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2005.01.006
50.
MaurerD.WerkerJ. F. (2014). Perceptual narrowing during infancy: A comparison of language and faces. Developmental Psychobiology, 56(2), 154–178. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21177
51.
McKoneE.WanL.PidcockM.CrookesK.ReynoldsK.DawelA.FiorentiniC. (2019). A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49202-0
52.
NakatoE.OtsukaY.KanazawaS.YamaguchiM. K.KakigiR. (2011). Distinct differences in the pattern of hemodynamic response to happy and angry facial expressions in infants—a near-infrared spectroscopic study. NeuroImage, 54(2), 1600–1606. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.09.021
53.
PascalisO.de HaanM.NelsonC. A. (2002). Is face processing species-specific during the first year of life?Science, 296(5571), 1321–1323. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1070223
54.
PascalisO.FortM.QuinnP. C. (2020). Development of face processing: Are there critical or sensitive periods?Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 36, 7–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2020.05.005
55.
PauenS.BirgitT.HoehlS.BechtelS. (2015). Show me the world: Object categorization and socially guided object learning in infancy. Child Development Perspectives, 9(2), 111–116. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12119
56.
PeñaM.AriasD.Dehaene-LambertzG. (2014). Gaze following is accelerated in healthy preterm infants. Psychological Science, 25(10), 1884–1892. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614544307
57.
PhillipsA. T.WellmanH. M.SpelkeE. S. (2002). Infants’ ability to connect gaze and emotional expression to intentional action. Cognition, 85(1), 53–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(02)00073-2
58.
PickronC. B.FavaE.ScottL. S. (2014). The influence of face processing biases on eye gaze following and object processing during infancy. Journal of Vision, 14(10), 1268–1268. https://doi.org/10.1167/14.10.1268
59.
PowellL. J.KosakowskiH. L.SaxeR. (2018). Social origins of cortical face areas. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(9), 752–763. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.06.009
60.
PyykköJ.AshornP.AshornU.NiehausD. J. H.LeppänenJ. M. (2019). Cross-cultural analysis of attention disengagement times supports the dissociation of faces and patterns in the infant brain. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-51034-x
61.
QianM. K.QuinnP. C.HeymanG. D.PascalisO.FuG.LeeK. (2019). A long-term effect of perceptual individuation training on reducing implicit racial bias in preschool children. Child Development, 90(3), e290–e305. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12971
62.
QuinnP. C.BalasB. J.PascalisO. (2021). Reorganization in the representation of face-race categories from 6 to 9 months of age: Behavioral and computational evidence. Vision Research, 179, 34–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2020.11.006
63.
QuinnP. C.LeeK.PascalisO. (2018). Perception of face race by infants: Five developmental changes. Child Development Perspectives, 12(13), 204–209. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12286
64.
QuinnP. C.LeeK.PascalisO. (2020). Beyond perceptual development: Infant responding to social categories. In Advances in child development and behavior (1st ed., Vol. 58). Elsevier https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.acdb.2020.01.002.
65.
QuinnP. C.LeeK.PascalisO.TanakaJ. W. (2016). Narrowing in categorical responding to other-race face classes by infants. Developmental Science, 19(3), 362–371. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12301
66.
RajhansP.MissanaM.KrolK. M.GrossmannT. (2015). The association of temperament and maternal empathy with individual differences in infants’ neural responses to emotional body expressions. Development and Psychopathology, 27(4), 1205–1216. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579415000772
67.
ReidV. M.DunnK.YoungR. J.AmuJ.DonovanT.ReisslandN. (2017). The human fetus preferentially engages with face-like visual stimuli. Current Biology, 27(12), 1825–1828. e3. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.05.044
68.
ReschkeP. J.WalleE. A.DukesD. (2017). Interpersonal development in infancy: The interconnectedness of emotion understanding and social cognition. Child Development Perspectives, 11(3), 178–183. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12230
69.
Rosa-SalvaO.RegolinL.VallortigaraG. (2010). Faces are special for newly hatched chicks: Evidence for inborn domain-specific mechanisms underlying spontaneous preferences for face-like stimuli. Developmental Science, 13(4), 565–577. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00914.x
70.
RoseS. A.JankowskiJ. J.FeldmanJ. F. (2002). Speed of processing and face recognition at 7 and 12 months. Infancy, 3(4), 435–455. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327078IN0304_02
71.
RubaA. L.RepacholiB. M. (2020). Do preverbal infants understand discrete facial expressions of emotion ?Emotion Review, 12(4), 235. 250. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073919871098
72.
SafarK.MoulsonM. C. (2020). Three-month-old infants show enhanced behavioral and neural sensitivity to fearful faces. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 42, 100759. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2020.100759
SenjuA.CsibraG. (2008). Gaze following in human infants depends on communicative signals. Current Biology, 18(9), 668–671. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2008.03.059
75.
SenjuA.JohnsonM. H. (2009). The eye contact effect: Mechanisms and development. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 13(3), 127–134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2008.11.009
76.
SenjuA.VernettiA.GaneaN.HudryK.TuckerL.CharmanT.JohnsonM. H. (2015). Early social experience affects the development of eye gaze processing. Current Biology, 25(23), 3086–3091. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.10.019
SinghL.QuinnP. C.XiaoN. G.LeeK. (2019). Monolingual but not bilingual infants demonstrate racial bias in social cue use. Developmental Science, 22(6), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12809
79.
SinghL.TanA.QuinnP. C. (2021). Infants recognize words spoken through opaque masks but not through clear masks. Developmental Science, 24, e13117. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13117
80.
SorceJ. F.EmdeR. N.CamposJ. J.KlinnertM. D. (1985). Maternal emotional signaling: Its effect on the visual cliff behavior of 1-year-olds. Developmental Psychology, 21(1), 195–200. https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.21.1.195
81.
SugdenN. A.MarquisA. R. (2017). Meta-analytic review of the development of face discrimination in infancy: Face race, face gender, infant age, and methodology moderate face discrimination. Psychological Bulletin, 143(11), 1201–1244. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000116
82.
SugdenN. A.Mohamed-AliM. I.MoulsonM. C. (2014). I spy with my little eye: Typical, daily exposure to faces documented from a first-person infant perspective. Developmental Psychobiology, 56(2), 249–261. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21183
83.
SugdenN. A.MoulsonM. C. (2017). Hey baby, what’s “up”? One- and 3-month-olds experience faces primarily upright but non-upright faces offer the best views. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 70(5), 959–969. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470218.2016.1154581
84.
SugdenN. A.MoulsonM. C. (2019). These are the people in your neighbourhood : Consistency and persistence in infants’ exposure to caregivers’, relatives’, and strangers’ faces across contexts. Vision Research, 157, 230-241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2018.09.005
85.
SugitaY. (2008). Face perception in monkeys reared with no exposure to faces. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 105(1), 394–398. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0706079105
86.
Taylor-CollsS.Pasco FearonR. M. (2015). The effects of parental behavior on infants’ neural processing of emotion expressions. Child Development, 86(3), 877–888. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12348
87.
ThamD. S. Y.WooP. J.BremnerJ. G. (2019). Development of the other-race effect in Malaysian-Chinese infants. Developmental Psychobiology, 61(1), 107–115. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.21783
UttleyL.De BoisferonA. H.DupierrixE.LeeK.QuinnP. C.SlaterA. M.PascalisO. (2013). Six-month-old infants match other-race faces with a non-native language. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 37(2), 84–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025412467583
90.
VernettiA.GaneaN.TuckerL.CharmanT.JohnsonM. H.SenjuA. (2018). Infant neural sensitivity to eye gaze depends on early experience of gaze communication. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, 34, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2018.05.007
91.
VogelsangL.Gilad-GutnickS.EhrenbergE.YonasA.DiamondS.HeldR.SinhaP. (2018). Potential downside of high initial visual acuity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(44), 11333–11338. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1800901115
92.
WooP. J.QuinnP. C.MéaryD.LeeK.PascalisO. (2020). A developmental investigation of the other-race categorization advantage in a multiracial population: Contrasting social categorization and perceptual expertise accounts. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 197, 104870. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2020.104870
93.
WörmannV.HolodynskiM.KärtnerJ.KellerH. (2012). A cross-cultural comparison of the development of the social smile. A longitudinal study of maternal and infant imitation in 6- and 12-week-old infants. Infant Behavior and Development, 35(3), 335–347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2012.03.002
94.
XiaoN. G.QuinnP. C.LiuS.GeL.PascalisO.LeeK. (2018). Older but not younger infants associate own-race faces with happy music and other-race faces with sad music. Developmental Science, 21(2), e12537. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12537.
95.
XiaoN. G.WuR.QuinnP. C.LiuS.TummeltshammerK. S.KirkhamN. Z.LeeK. (2018). Infants rely more on gaze cues from own-race than other-race adults for learning under uncertainty. Child Development, 89(3), e229–e244. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12798
96.
XiaoW. S.FuG.QuinnP. C.QinJ.TanakaJ. W.PascalisO.LeeK. (2015). Individuation training with other-race faces reduces preschoolers’ implicit racial bias: A link between perceptual and social representation of faces in children. Developmental Science, 18(4), 655–663. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12241
97.
XieW.McCormickS. A.WesterlundA.BowmanL. C.NelsonC. A. (2018). Neural correlates of facial emotion processing in infancy. Developmental Science, 22(3), e12758. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12758
