Why mix-ups don't happen in the nursery: Evidence for an experience-based interpretation of the other-age effect

Abstract

Adults' face recognition abilities vary across face types, as evidenced by the other-race and other-species effects. Recent evidence shows that face age is another dimension affecting adults' performance in face recognition tasks, giving rise to an other-age effect (OAE). By comparing recognition performance for adult and newborn faces in a group of maternity-ward nurses and a control group of novice participants, the current study provides evidence for an experience-based interpretation of the OAE. Novice participants were better at recognizing adult than newborn faces and showed an inversion effect for adult faces. Nurses manifested an inversion cost of equal magnitude for both adult and newborn faces and a smaller OAE in comparison to the novices. The results indicate that experience acquired exclusively in adulthood is capable of modulating the OAE and suggest that the visual processes involved in face recognition are still plastic in adulthood, granted that extensive experience with multiple faces is acquired.

Keywords:

• Face recognition
• Face age
• Inversion effect
• Experience
• Plasticity

This work was supported by a research grant from the Ministero dell'Università e della Ricerca and a grant from the University of Milano-Bicocca to the first author. The authors wish to thank the nursing staff at the Obstetric Unit of the San Gerardo Hospital in Monza, Italy, for their collaboration.