Development of infants’ representation of female and male faces

Abstract

We examined development of 5- and 10.5-month-old infants’ face representations, focusing on infants’ discrimination and categorization of female and male faces. We tested for gender-based preferences and categorization of female and male faces by presenting infants with pairs of faces and then habituating them to a series of majority female or male face ensembles. We then tested for gender preferences with new face pairs (one female and one male; Study 1) or new face ensembles (majority female and majority male; Study 2). We found that both 5- and 10.5-month-old infants discriminated female from male faces in face pairs, and both age groups looked more at female faces during habituation. Neither age group, however, provided evidence of gender-based categorization. We interpret these findings within a theoretical framework that stresses environmental exposure to different social categories, and infants’ ability to detect commonalities of features within categories. We conclude that infants’ gender-based categorization of faces is constrained by the set of features available in the input.