Before six months of age, infants readily perceive differences between faces within both familiar (e.g., own-race) and unfamiliar (e.g., other-race) groups. Importantly, by 9 months of age, they have lost ability for perceiving differences between other-race faces. This loss in perceptual ability is called "perceptual narrowing" and is theoretically driven by the experiences infants have interacting with some groups of people more than others. With funding from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Lisa Scott, working at the University of Massachusetts, is carrying out research to understand how perceptual experience and brain maturation interact during infancy to result in brain and face recognition specialization. During a brief period of infancy, perceptual biases are formed, apparently, leading to long-lasting deficits in face recognition and identification of individuals within unfamiliar or less frequently encountered groups. Recent research suggests that perceptual narrowing arises when infants do not learn to associate individual names, such as "Sue" or "Bob," with people of other races. Faces from racial groups with which infants do not interact, faces that remain nameless, are perceived as one undifferentiated category. Dr. Scott is investigating how different perceptual experiences influence the development of underlying brain regions responsible for face perception and face processing biases, which lead to difficulties identifying and remembering people within another race and to difficulties perceiving and interpreting social and emotional face information. Dr. Scott hypothesizes that learning the names of faces or objects at the individual level rather than at the category level leads to qualitatively distinct brain representations and more discriminative behavioral responses. She expects that perceptual narrowing is driven primarily by experience and not brain maturation. In her studies, infants and their families receive books with labeled images of faces and objects, and the families are asked to read these books to their infants for three months. Infant learning is examined by measuring whether or not infants of different ages can differentiate between trained and new images never seen before, and by using eye tracking to measure where they focus on the images. Brain activity is recorded before and after training to determine whether learning names influences neural responses to faces and objects. Dr. Scott predicts that learning the names of faces also results in enhanced development of face processing beyond face recognition, including emotion and gaze perception.
While much is known about brain maturation within the first year of life, less is known about how experience and learning affect specialized neural responses and abilities. The results of this project are expected to lead to a better understanding of how infants tune their perceptual systems in an ever-changing world, and how specific early experiences influence later perceptual abilities. The outcome of this research is expected to have implications in the area of developmental disorders such as Autism, and in the understanding of social interactions and social biases. Understanding the development of face recognition can help explain relationships between race perception and social prejudice. The results can be used to inform parents, educators, and policy makers about perceptual learning and the role of experience on the developing brain. Cognitive neuroscience methods are becoming increasingly important tools in infant development research, so the next generation of scientists need expertise with these techniques. Dr. Scott is implementing a summer research experience program that aims to introduce high school, undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students to scientific inquiry in cognitive neuroscience and methods used to study brain development. This program aims to assist aspiring young scientists in developing their academic and career goals, facilitate and encourage students to form mentoring relationships and networks, and teach students about the importance of community outreach, education, and the responsible dissemination and communication of research findings.
