Recognition of individual faces and average face prototypes by 1-and 3-month-old infants

We tested the ability of 1- and 3-month-old infants to form prototypic repr esentations of faces. Following familiarization to four individual faces, b oth 1- and 3-month-olds showed evidence of recognizing the individual faces but only 3-month-olds showed evidence of recognizing, and thus having ment ally computed, the average of the four face stimuli. Additional experiments showed that (a) 1-month-olds failed to show evidence of recognizing the av erage face even when the test was made easier, and (b) the results could no t be attributed to preexisting visual preferences among the faces. These re sults are discussed in relation to a two-process theory of the development of face recognition and the hypothesis that babies' abilities to form proto types of faces underlies their visual responsiveness to attractive faces, ( C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.