INFANTS PERCEPTION OF FACE ORIENTATION

The present cross-sectional study traced the development from four to six months of the infant's ability to identify the orientation of a face. Identification was inferred from the infant's differential visual fixation of a novel over a previously exposed stimulus. Infants at 16 weeks were able to distinguish a face in its upright position from the same face positioned in a nonupright, sideways, orientation. Distinctions among nonupright orientations such as upside down from sideways were not made at 16 weeks, but did occur at 22 weeks. No differentiation of left from right was evident at 22 weeks. Additional results indicated that the diagonal is confused at 16 weeks with both upright and upside down orientation and at 22 weeks is distinguished from the upright but is not differentiated from upside down or sideways. The pattern of results confirms the main assumptions of Braine's theory of the development of orientation perception. © 1979 Ablex Publishing Corporation.