The relative contribution of face and body for person recognition in infancy

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.