During their first year, infants attune to the faces and language(s) that are frequent in their environment. The present study investigates the impact of language familiarity on how French-learning 9- and 12-month-olds recognize own-race faces. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized with the talking face of a Caucasian bilingual German-French speaker reciting a nursery rhyme in French (native condition) or in German (non-native condition). In the test phase, infants’ face recognition was tested by presenting a picture of the speaker's face they were familiarized with, side by side with a novel face. At 9 and 12 months, neither infants in the native condition nor the ones in the non-native condition clearly recognized the speaker's face. In Experiment 2, we familiarized infants with the still picture of the speaker's face, along with the auditory speech stream. This time, both 9- and 12-month-olds recognized the face of the speaker they had been familiarized with, but only if she spoke in their native language. This study shows that at least from 9 months of age, language modulates the way faces are recognized.

中文翻译：

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语言熟悉程度影响 9 个月和 12 个月大婴儿的本族人脸识别

在第一年，婴儿会适应环境中常见的面孔和语言。本研究调查了语言熟悉度对学习法语的 9 个月和 12 个月大的孩子如何识别本种族面孔的影响。在实验 1 中，婴儿熟悉了一个白种人的双语德法双语者用法语（母语）或德语（非母语）背诵童谣的说话面孔。在测试阶段，婴儿的面部识别通过展示他们熟悉的说话者面部的图片，并与一张新面孔并排进行测试。在 9 个月和 12 个月时，无论是原生状态的婴儿还是非原生状态的婴儿都无法清楚地识别说话者的脸。在实验 2 中，我们让婴儿熟悉说话者面部的静止图片，随着听觉语音流。这一次，9 个月大和 12 个月大的孩子都能认出他们熟悉的说话者的脸，但前提是她说的是他们的母语。这项研究表明，至少从 9 个月大的时候开始，语言就会调​​节人脸识别的方式。