DEVELOPMENT OF FACE RECOGNITION

In this article, research findings from studies which have examined th e developmental pattern for recognition of unfamiliar faces and releva nt theories are reviewed. Recognition of faces was found to improve wi th age from about five years to adulthood, with some studies reporting a dip during early adolescence. Two neuropsychological explanations ( development of hemisphere specialization and maturational changes) and four information processing explanations (depth of face processing, p attern of feature salience, development of face schema, and encoding s hift) are described and assessed for their tenability in light of repo rted findings. Explanations for the developmental dip are also discuss ed. Since these explanations failed to receive sufficient empirical su pport, an alternative explanation in terms of increasing efficiency of encoding is proposed.