Responses to mother's face in 3-week to 5-month-old infants

Pascalis, de Schonen, Morton, Deruelle, and Fabre-Grenet (1995) showed that while 4-day-old infants looked longer at their mother's face than at a stranger's, they did not do so if both women were wearing headscarves. In the present experiment, we obtained similar results for infants of 19-25 days. In contrast, a group of 35- to 40-day-old infants was able to make the discrimination with mother and stranger wearing headscarves. When both women wore masks, so that only hair and chin lines were visible, the discrimination was not made earlier than 120 days. There was also a developmental trend from interest in the mother for 19- to 25-day-old infants, to interest in the stranger for the 145- to 155-day-old infants. Further investigation showed that the main contribution toward this trend was from the male infants.