The Ability of Young Children to Recognize Facial Photographs of Young Children Young Adults and Senior Citizens

A review of the literature on facial recognition including a description of its development from birth to old age, hypothesized reasons for its unique development, and factors which affect it, reveals the need for facial recognition studies involving the young child. Twenty children (10 males, 10 females) at each of three ages (3, 5, and 7 years) were presented with 30 pictures of persons of both sexes from three age groups (3-7, 18-25, and 50 years and above). A testing procedure followed in which each child was asked to pick out the test picture from a photo album page with five distractor pictures of persons of like sex and age. Results showed that facial recognition ability improved with age, that females were recognized more easily than males, and that pictures of young children and senior citizens were easier to discriminate than pictures of young adults. Also the interaction of the age of the child and the age of the picture proved significant, indicating that most of the differential response to the age groups was due to the 7 year-olds, who recognized children and senior citizens at a significantly higher level than young adults. Possible interpretations of these findings are discussed and future research is suggested.