Publication Date

2004

Abstract

The ability of infants to discriminate and recognize faces gained recent attention; however, much of the research focused on discrimination of the mother's face from a female stranger's face. This study examined father versus stranger face discrimination using an operant sucking procedure, in which images of fathers and strangers were presented on a computer monitor contingent upon the sucking responses of the infant. Discrimination was determined by computing the difference in the number of responses for each face. Results indicated that 3 infants under the age of 4 months discriminated the father's image from the image of a stranger, consistent with the schema theory of face perception. Future research should include larger sample sizes, and further study the mechanism of infant face discrimination.

Disciplines

Psychology

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