Developmental changes in the effect of inversion: Using a picture book to investigate face recognition

A novel child-oriented procedure was used to examine the face-recognition a bilities of children as young as 2 years. A recognition task was embedded i n a picture book containing a story about two boys and a witch. The story a nd the task were designed to be entertaining for children of a wide age ran ge. In eight trials, the children were asked to pick out one of the boys fr om amongst eight distracters as quickly as possible. Response-time data to both upright and inverted conditions were analysed. The results revealed th at children aged 6 years onwards showed the classic inversion effect. By co ntrast, the youngest children, aged 2 to 4 years, were faster at recognisin g the target face in the inverted condition than in the upright condition. Several possible explanations for this 'inverted inversion effect' are disc ussed.