单选题

An Infant's Preference for Faces

A The human face is one of the most complex visual stimuli encountered by the infant: it moves, it is three-dimensional, it has areas of both high and low contrast; and it contains features that change (when talking, when changing expression, when looking at or away from the baby), but which are in an invariant relationship (the eyes are always above the mouth, etc). While the image is degraded and unfocused to the newborn, enough information is potentially available for the infant to learn to recognize its mother's face, and for other aspects of face perception. Several investigators have found that infants recognize, and prefer, their mother's face soon after birth. There is considerable evidence suggesting that faces are special, right from birth. Here we will describe some of the research that has investigated other aspects of face perception at, or near birth, and discuss how face perception might develop during infancy.
B Several researchers have found that infants prefer to look at attractive faces, when these are shown paired with faces judged by adults to be less attractive (Hoss and Langlois, 2003). The "attractiveness effect" has also been found in studies with infants who averaged less than 3 days from birth at the time of testing (e.g. Slater et al, 1998). The typical interpretation of the "attractiveness effect" is that it results from a facial prototype: if many faces of the same gender are computer-averaged, the resulting "average" face is always perceived as being attractive. According to this interpretation, attractive faces are seen as more "face-like" because they match more closely either the facial prototype which infants form from experience, or one they enter the world with.
C Some of the clearest evidence that faces are special for infants is the finding that, only minutes after birth, they imitate a range of expressions that they see an adult produce (e.g. Reissland, 1988). Apparently, this was first discovered by a student of the eminent psychologist Piaget, Olga Maratos, who reported to him that if she stuck out her tongue to a young baby, the baby would respond by sticking out its tongue to her (according to Piaget's theory, this ability should not appear until the second year). Apparently, when Piaget was informed of these findings, he sucked contemplatively on his pipe for a few moments, and then commented "How rude!"
D Facial imitation can be taken to indicate that babies can match what they see to some inbuilt knowledge of their own face, and can then use this match to produce the same facial expression (which might be tongue protrusion, mouth opening, furrowing of the brow, or other expression). The infants, of course, cannot see themselves as they produce it. This seems to be an inborn ability, and raises the question of why infants imitate. One idea is that babies imitate as a form of social interaction, and as a way of learning about people's identity (Meltzoff and Moore, 2000). These findings support the view that infants enter the world with a detailed representation of the human face. E At first glance the development of the ability to recognize faces appears to follow a typical trajectory: rapid change during infancy, followed by more gradual improvement into adolescence. This pattern contrasts with some aspects of language development. For example, speech perception is characterized by a loss of ability with age, such that 4-to 6-month olds can discriminate phonetic differences that distinguish syllables in both their native and unfamiliar languages, whereas 10-to 12-month olds can only discriminate the phonetic variations used in their native language. However, Nelson (2001) proposed that the ability to perceive faces also narrows with development, due in large measure to the cortical specialization that occurs with experience. This hypothesis is indirectly supported by several lines of research. For example, human adults are far more accurate in recognizing individual human than monkey faces; the opposite is true for monkeys.
F A recent study by Pascalis et al (2002) into ability to discriminate between human and monkey faces found that 9-month-old infants and adults only discriminated between faces of their own species, while the 6-month olds showed discrimination between individuals of both species. Their results support the hypothesis that the perceptual window narrows with age, and that during the first year of life the face processing system becomes attuned to a human template.
G Infants are also able to discriminate on the basis of gender. Quinn et al (2002) presented 3-to 4-month-old infants with a number of colour photographs of different faces, all of which were from the same gender category, either male or female. Subsequently infants were presented with two novel stimuli, a new face from the familiar category, and a face from the other, unfamiliar gender. The fact that the infants looked longer at the new face from the unfamiliar gender is taken as evidence that the infants have successfully categorized the new face from the familiar gender, and recognized that the new face from the unfamiliar gender does not belong to this category.
H Quinn also found that infants who had been familiarized to male faces subsequently showed a strong preference for looking at a female face when this was shown side-by-side with a novel male face, but those familiarized to female faces did not show a preference for a male face. In their second experiment it turned out that this was because all the infants had a strong tendency to look at female faces in preference to male ones! However, a majority of infants, at least in Western societies, are reared with a female primary caregiver for at least the first few months. When Quinn et al tested infants who were reared with a male primary carer they found the opposite result—these infants responded better to male faces.
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

单选题 To newborn infants, people's faces generally appear

A. frightening.
B. hazy.
C. indistinguishable.
D. simple in form.

单选题 What have researchers found concerning infants' reactions to faces?

A. They find all faces equally attractive.
B. They share the preferences of adults.
C. They differ from each other in their reactions.
D. They develop preferences only after several weeks.

单选题 Olga Maratos found that

A. Piaget had misinterpreted the behaviour of 2-year-olds.
B. Piaget had overestimated the abilities of newborn infants.
C. infants start to imitate at around 2 years of age.
D. newborn infants are capable of imitation.

单选题 What does the writer say about language development during infancy?

A. Young infants have some abilities which older infants do not have.
B. Language ability develops continuously, from infancy through childhood.
C. The number of sounds recognised by infants increases with age.
D. Certain sounds are particularly difficult for infants to recognise.