ERIC Number: EJ945358
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011-Sep
Pages: 7
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0012-1649
EISSN: N/A
Developing a Side Bias for Conspecific Faces during Childhood
Balas, Benjamin; Moulson, Margaret C.
Developmental Psychology, v47 n5 p1472-1478 Sep 2011
Adults preferentially use information from the left side of face images to judge gender, emotion, and identity. In this study, we examined the development of this visual-field bias over middle childhood (5-10 years). Our goal was to both characterize the developmental trajectory of the left-side bias (should one exist) and examine the selectivity of the phenomenon. We used own- versus other-species faces (human and monkey faces) to ask whether the left-side bias was equally strong for categories with which children have vastly different amounts of experience. We found that the left-side bias did show both a developmental trend over the age range we considered and distinct category selectivity; for human faces the preference for the left side of the image increased across the age range tested, but for monkey faces it did not. We discuss our results in the context of experience-dependent perceptual narrowing during development. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)
Descriptors: Infants, Children, Primatology, Perception, Human Body, Visual Stimuli, Task Analysis, Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Age Differences
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Elementary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Massachusetts
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A