Sugden, N. A. & Moulson, M. C.
Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Most adults are face experts, however it is unclear what influences the development of this expertise. From birth, infants evidence dose-dependent face preferences (e.g., mom?s face, Bushnell, 2001). At 3 months, infants prefer face types (e.g., female, Quinn et al., 2002) with which they have the most experience (Sugden, Mohamed-Ali, & Moulson, 2014). At 9 months, infants no longer exhibit discrimination between infrequently experienced face types (e.g., other-race, Kelly et al., 2005, 2007). This suggests that the natural statistics of infants' visual world shape face learning, however no prior study has directly linked face frequencies to infants' face preference for and discrimination of faces. Natural, daily experience of 20 3-month-old infants was recorded for approximately one week with a head-mounted camera (M=3.97 hours of video, SD=2.74). The video is currently being coded frame-by-frame for faces. After the week recording, infants' preference for and discrimination of unfamiliar male and female own- and other-race faces was tested with separate looking tasks. We hypothesize that exposure will predict preference, but not discrimination at 3 months, with more exposure resulting in greater behavioral preference for frequently experienced face types.