Mother's face recognition by neonates: A replication and an extension

Abstract

Previous experimenters have found that 4-day-old neonates look longer at their mother's face than at a stranger's face. We have replicated this finding under conditions where the infants are only provided with visual information on identity, with all the usual stimuli associated with the presence of the mother's face absent. The structure responsible for this cannot be equated with Conspec, the innate structure underlying face preference in neonates (Johnson & Morton, 1991). In a second experiment, we show that infants do not discriminate mother from stranger when both women are wearing head scarves. This indicates that, unlike older infants (de Schonen, Gil de Diaz, & Mathivet, 1986; de Schonen & Mathivet, 1990), neonates acquire a representation of their mother's face in which the hair line and outer contour have an integral part. This suggests that the system responsible for the neonates' performance is not the same as the one at work in older infants.