{"title":"The development of Mooney face perception in 6- to 11-month-old infants","authors":"Nanako Yamanaka , Yumiko Otsuka , Masaharu Kato , Nobu Shirai","doi":"10.1016/j.jecp.2025.106199","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Mooney faces are two-tone facial images with degraded individual features (e.g., eyes and mouth) and retain only shadows and highlights. Previous research has reported that even young infants can detect faces from Mooney face images despite the degraded features. In Experiment 1, we tested the upright preference for Mooney face images with the features degraded at four levels, from Level 1 (slightly degraded) to Level 4 (extremely degraded). The results indicated that infants showed a significant visual preference for upright images over inverted images under the Level 1 (slightly degraded) and Level 2 (moderately degraded) conditions. In addition, in Experiment 2 we confirmed that infants showed an upright face preference for the original non-degraded face images. The results of the two experiments suggest that although infants aged 6 to 11 months consistently showed an upright face preference even for Mooney face images with relatively modest degradedness, their ability to detect face figures from Mooney face figures was still immature</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48391,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Experimental Child Psychology","volume":"253 ","pages":"Article 106199"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2025-02-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Experimental Child Psychology","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096525000050","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"PSYCHOLOGY, DEVELOPMENTAL","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Mooney faces are two-tone facial images with degraded individual features (e.g., eyes and mouth) and retain only shadows and highlights. Previous research has reported that even young infants can detect faces from Mooney face images despite the degraded features. In Experiment 1, we tested the upright preference for Mooney face images with the features degraded at four levels, from Level 1 (slightly degraded) to Level 4 (extremely degraded). The results indicated that infants showed a significant visual preference for upright images over inverted images under the Level 1 (slightly degraded) and Level 2 (moderately degraded) conditions. In addition, in Experiment 2 we confirmed that infants showed an upright face preference for the original non-degraded face images. The results of the two experiments suggest that although infants aged 6 to 11 months consistently showed an upright face preference even for Mooney face images with relatively modest degradedness, their ability to detect face figures from Mooney face figures was still immature
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Experimental Child Psychology is an excellent source of information concerning all aspects of the development of children. It includes empirical psychological research on cognitive, social/emotional, and physical development. In addition, the journal periodically publishes Special Topic issues.