Lecturer in Psychology, Emily Coyne-Umfreville, discusses the use of developmental psychology for babies, and why they are so interested in the human face.
Infancy is an optional module on the BSc (Hons) Psychology course, and examines the social, emotional, cognitive and neural changes that occur during the first two years of life.
To understand why babies look so interested in our faces, we can use developmental psychology to learn about the process and brain structures involved in face processing. Babies appear to be born with an innate ability to process faces. We have research evidence that shows babies preference for their mothers’ face compared to another female face within the first few days after birth (Walton et al, 1992).
Recognition of human and animal faces
In fact, this ability to process faces does not end there. Research by Pascalis’ team has shown that babies before the age of nine months old develop extraordinary face processing ability which is more adept than our ability to process faces as adults. To test this hypothesis, researchers worked with a group of infants who were six months old and a group of infants who were nine months old. They used a technique known as habituation, where you show a picture to a baby until they lose interest and then you take the picture away, and then bring back the same picture again. You repeat this until they no longer show any interest in the picture.
What Pascalis’ team found was that when you showed the nine-month-old babies photographs of different monkey faces they reacted by losing interest (like older children and adults). However, when they showed the group of six-month-old babies the photographs of different monkey faces, they showed new interest in every photo. This suggests that thing six-month-old babies were able to distinguish between the different monkeys. Even zookeepers who work with these animals on a day-to-day basis cannot distinguish between the faces of monkeys (they use other identifying features and markings).
Loss of processing abilities over time
So, what changes in that three-month period that means we lose the ability to process individual animal faces? We can explain this in developmental psychology by a process known as perceptual narrowing or pruning. This is where our brain starts to prioritise the connections which allow us to understand the world around us. Brain connections or synapses which we do not regularly use will be lost in this process of perceptual narrowing. So, for example, if we are not regularly seeing monkey faces, we would lose this ability. Perhaps Mowgli from the Jungle Book would have maintained this extraordinary ability!
What is interesting about this, is that there was a time which you were able to process and recognise the faces of different animals, and this is a skill which your brain has lost over time.
Developmental psychology has helped us to understand the changes that babies go through in those early years (including development in the womb) and allows us to track and support babies’ development. Much of the work around developmental psychology has influenced policy around midwife and health visitor engagement with new families.
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Studying infancy
Within the Infancy module studied on the Psychology course here at BCU, we examine development from pregnancy through to age two. We use playful learning techniques to allow students to gain an understanding of infant development from different perspectives. We also use authentic assessment where students are asked to design a toy or an app that is an infant or the parents.
The design for this toy or app is then justified by using developmental psychology theory and research in this area. There have been some fantastic products that students have designed in the past, for example interactive toys, apps to help with babies’ language development, a plate which weighs the food so that parents are aware of how much the child has eaten during weaning and trackers that can be used for developmental milestones.
References
Pascalis, O., de Haan, M., & Nelson, C. 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
Walton, G. E., Bower, N. J., & Bower, T. G. (1992). Recognition of familiar faces by newborns. Infant Behavior & Development, 15(2), 265–269. https://doi.org/10.1016/0163-6383(92)80027-R
