The Shaping of the Face Space in Early Infancy: Becoming a Native Face Processor

Face perception remains one of the most intensively researched areas in psychology and allied disciplines and there has been much debate regarding the early origins and experiential determinants of face processing. This article reviews studies, the majority of which have appeared in the last decade, which discuss possible mechanisms underlying face perception at birth and which document the prominent role of experience in shaping infants’ face processing abilities. In the first months of life, infants develop a preference for female and own-race faces, and become better able to recognise and categorize own-race and own-species faces. This perceptual narrowing and shaping of the “face space” forms a foundation for later face expertise in childhood and adulthood, and testifies to the remarkable plasticity of the developing visual system.