Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The objective of my research is to understand the mechanisms of human development. To do so, I study the development of visual perception and its alteration by variations in visual experience. This proposal focuses on face processing. Adults are experts at recognizing the identity of individual faces, largely because they are exquisitely sensitive to small differences among faces in the spacing of facial features. This sensitivity allows them to recognize faces from different points of view, under poor lighting conditions, and after many years have passed and the face has aged. This expertise is slow to mature: 14-year-olds are not adultlike and 4-year-olds cannot recognize even their own face when it is paired with a foil face that differs only in the spacing of features. I will investigate the role of experience in the development of expertise through two research programs. The first focuses on face perception during the pre-school years, a time period that has not been studied systematically. I will test the hypothesis that multiple face-processing mechanisms are sensitive to the spacing of facial features and that these mechanisms develop at different rates. For example, I will compare children's sensitivity to the spacing of features in unfamiliar versus familiar (e.g., a playmate) faces. The second focuses on the role of natural variations in experience on the development of expertise. Adults are better at recognizing own-race faces than other-race faces, thus their expertise is limited to faces with which they have abundant experience. I will investigate the role of experience using three complementary approaches: a) I will conduct a longitudinal study of the development of expertise for a new race of faces in foreign exchange students (e.g., Chinese students arriving in Canada); b) I will compare children who are exposed primarily to own-race faces with children adopted from China who receive extensive exposure to Caucasian and Chinese faces; and c) I will test adults with expertise with nonhuman (monkey) faces because they are curators at a zoo. Together, the results will add to our understanding of human visual perception and of developmental mechanisms.