COGS 200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: In Utero
31 May 2016
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Experience - studies show it starts as early as in utero. De nite preference to what looks like a face. Premise: two di erent faces each for human and monkey, rst picture is shown until boredom, then switch to picture 2. At 6 months of age, infants can discriminate individual human faces and monkey faces. At 9 months and adult, only discriminate human faces (not monkey faces) 9-month olds could distinguish both and even new faces. Perceptual narrowing: discrimination of perceptual information broadly tuned at rst, then declines to be more selective with experience. We start to lose those distinctions that are irrelevant to our own understanding. Interestingly enough, the 9 month old barrier held (applied to english speakers), and the di erentiation declined as infants got older. But hindi infants could do it no problem.
