Newborns discriminate schematic faces from scrambled faces

Newborn attention to, and discrimination of, facelike patterns was examined in three experiments employing 35 one- to three-day-old infants. Different ial eye tracking and head turning to three moving stimuli (a schematic face , a scrambled face, and a luminance-matched blank) were measured in two of the three experiments. The newborns turned their eyes and heads farther to follow patterned stimuli, containing facelike features, than to a luminance -matched blank, but they did not turn farther to a stimulus with the featur es arranged in a facelike manner compared to features scrambled. A third ex periment tested newborns ability to discriminate between the facelike and s crambled face patterns. Using an infant-controlled procedure, infants showe d similar initial fixation times and similar numbers of trials to reach a 6 0% response decrement criterion to both patterned stimuli. Following habitu ation, novelty responding indicated that infants discriminated between the schematic face and the scrambled face patterns. Although infants did not sh ow a preference for a facelike stimulus compared to a features-scrambled pa ttern in the present experiments, they could discriminate the two patterns based on the internal arrangement of the facial features.