Cross-Species Face Discrimination
Researchers tested adults, six-month-old infants, and nine-month-old infants to see how well they distinguish faces across species.
Other-Race Effect
People of any background show a perceptual bias where they more easily distinguish faces from their own familiar groups than from less familiar groups.
Speech Segmentation and Foreign Languages
Infants, children, and adults learning new languages face the challenge of breaking continuous speech into meaningful words.
Perceptual Narrowing
Infants across cultures begin life with broad perceptual abilities and then specialize based on the stimuli they regularly experience during early development.
In-Group and Out-Group Adaptation
Human ancestors lived in small groups where recognizing familiar individuals and distinguishing outsiders could affect survival, cooperation, and access to resources.
Exposure and Perceptual Plasticity
Adults and children can improve their ability to distinguish unfamiliar faces through sustained exposure, even though plasticity decreases with age.
Individuation and Respect
People who experience misidentification and the people who do the misidentifying both navigate a common perceptual limitation that can carry social consequences.