Infants show an advantage in processing female and familiar race faces, but the effect sizes are often small, suggesting individual differences in their discrimination abilities. This research assessed whether differences in 6–10-month-olds’ temperament (surgency and orienting) predicted how they scanned individual faces varying in race and gender during familiarization and whether and how long it took them to locate the face during a visual search task. This study also examined whether infants viewing faces posing pleasant relative to neutral expressions would facilitate their discrimination of male and unfamiliar race faces. Results showed that infants’ surgency on its own or in conjunction with their orienting regularly interacted with facial characteristics to predict their scanning and location of faces. Furthermore, infants’ scanning patterns (dwell times and internal–external fixation shifts) correlated with their ability and time to locate a familiarized face. Moreover, infants who viewed faces with pleasant expressions showed better discrimination of unfamiliar race and male faces compared with infants who viewed neutral faces. Including temperament in the analyses consistently demonstrated its significance for understanding infant face processing. Findings suggest that positive interactions with other-race individuals and men might reduce processing disadvantages for those face types. Locating familiar adults in a timely manner is a crucial skill for infants to develop and these data elucidate factors influencing this ability.

中文翻译：

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婴儿气质的个体差异影响面部加工。


婴儿在处理女性和熟悉的种族面孔方面表现出优势，但效果通常很小，这表明他们的辨别能力存在个体差异。这项研究评估了 6-10 个月大的孩子的气质（紧迫感和定向力）的差异是否可以预测他们在熟悉过程中如何扫描不同种族和性别的个人面孔，以及他们在视觉搜索任务中是否需要以及需要​​多长时间才能找到面孔。这项研究还研究了婴儿看到相对中性表情的愉悦面孔是否会促进他们对男性和不熟悉的种族面孔的辨别。结果表明，婴儿的手术本身或与定向经常与面部特征相互作用，以预测他们的扫描和面部位置。此外，婴儿的扫描模式（停留时间和内外注视变化）与他们定位熟悉面孔的能力和时间相关。此外，与看到中性面孔的婴儿相比，看到表情愉快的面孔的婴儿对不熟悉的种族和男性面孔表现出更好的辨别力。将气质纳入分析始终证明了其对于理解婴儿面部处理的重要性。研究结果表明，与其他种族个体和男性的积极互动可能会减少这些面孔类型的处理劣势。及时找到熟悉的成年人是婴儿发展的一项关键技能，这些数据阐明了影响这种能力的因素。