September 2024
Volume 24, Issue 10
Open Access
Vision Sciences Society Annual Meeting Abstract  |   September 2024
The relative contribution of face and body for person recognition in infancy
Author Affiliations & Notes
  • Megumi Kobayashi
    Niigata University
  • So Kanazawa
    Japan Women's University
  • Masami K. Yamaguchi
    Chuo University
  • Alice J. O'Toole
    The University of Texas at Dallas
  • Footnotes
    Acknowledgements  This research was supported by JSPS KAKENHI grant for MK (23H01055) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Sciences and Technology (MEXT) KAKANHI grant for MKY (17H06454)
Journal of Vision September 2024, Vol.24, 757. doi:https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.24.10.757
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      Megumi Kobayashi, So Kanazawa, Masami K. Yamaguchi, Alice J. O'Toole; The relative contribution of face and body for person recognition in infancy. Journal of Vision 2024;24(10):757. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.24.10.757.

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      © ARVO (1962-2015); The Authors (2016-present)

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Abstract

In everyday life, people can identify others from a distance. Viewing distance plays a key role in determining the relative importance of face versus body information for person recognition (e.g., O’Toole et al., 2011). When a person is nearby, adults rely more on the face than body. However, at a distance, adults rely on both the face and body (Hahn et al., 2016). Despite evidence indicating that infants observe the bodies of other people from a young age (Jayaraman et al., 2017), no studies have explored infants’ recognition of people based on both face and body information. This study fills this gap by examining 5- to 7-month-old infants’ ability to recognize approaching people. Here, we used a familiarization/novelty-preference procedure. In Experiment 1, infants (N = 120) were familiarized with videos of a person approaching from a distance and tested on their recognition from distant and close views. We found that 5- to 7-month-olds were able to recognize the approaching person from both distances (all ps < .01). In Experiment 2, infants (N = 217) were familiarized with an approaching person, as in Experiment 1, but were tested with a video of approaching people with blurred faces (allowing access to body information) or blurred bodies (allowing access to face information) from distant and close views. At a distance, 5- and 7-month-olds recognized the approaching person based on body information (all ps < .01). When nearby, 5- and 6-month-olds recognized the approaching person based solely on face information (face: p < .01, body: p < 1), whereas 7-month-olds recognized the person based on both face and body information (face: p < .01, body: p = 0.02). We conclude that the relative contribution of face and body for person recognition would change with increasing age.

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