中華心理學刊 民101，54卷，1期，95-114
Chinese Journal of Psychology 2012, Vol.54, No.1, 95-114

Sarina Hui-Lin Chien（Graduate Institute of Neural & Cognitive Sciences, China Medical University）；Hsin Yueh Hsu（Graduate Institute of Neural & Cognitive Sciences, China Medical University）

Abstract

Neonates display reliable visual preferences for human faces and face-like stimuli, which has been taken as strong evidence for an innate domain-specific bias toward faces. Alternatively, neonatal face preference can be explained by an innate non-specific top-heavy configuration bias on the basis that faces are inherently top-heavy. This review article aims to address the early specialization process for face and race in Taiwanese infants based our recent work. In the first two sections, we will review the classic findings on the neonatal face preference research. Three broad theories, the sensory hypothesis by linear system approach in the late 80s, the innate domain-specific representation hypothesis in the early 90s, and the non-specific top-heavy bias hypothesis in the last decade, will be addressed and compared. In the third section, we further explored some deeper issues regarding the top-heavy configuration bias hypothesis as well as our recent follow-up work. Using a forced-choice novelty preference method, we found that 2.5- to 4.5-month-old infants showed significant and equal novelty preferences, suggesting a reliable discriminability between the two configurations and a disappearance of the top-heavy bias. Moreover, using an eye-tracker, we investigated whether the top-heavy bias is still present in 3- to 5.5-month olds and in adults as a comparison group, and found no evidence for the top-heavy bias in both infants and adults. In the forth section, we illustrated the idea of an early specialization process for human face and race. Several recent developmental cognitive neuroscience studies on the infant brain as well as the behavioral studies on the other-race-effect in Caucasian and Taiwanese infants were reviewed. Taken together, our position on early face processing is in line with experience-expectant view; this view considers the brain specialization as emerging gradually from the interaction between small innate constraints and the critical input provided by the species-typical or race-typical environment.

Keywords: experience-expectant, face processing, innate bias, newborn infants, other-race effect