Eye contrast polarity is critical for face recognition by infants.

Just as faces share the same basic arrangement of features, with two eyes above a nose above a mouth, human eyes all share the same basic contrast polarity relations, with a sclera lighter than an iris and a pupil, and this is unique among primates. The current study examined whether this bright-dark relationship of sclera to iris plays a critical role in face recognition from early in development. Specifically, we tested face discrimination in 7- and 8-month-old infants while independently manipulating the contrast polarity of the eye region and of the rest of the face.

Perception of Mooney faces by young infants: the role of local feature visibility, contrast polarity, and motion.

We examined the ability of young infants (3- and 4-month-olds) to detect faces in the two-tone images often referred to as Mooney faces. In Experiment 1, this performance was examined in conditions of high and low visibility of local features and with either the presence or absence of the outer head contour. We found that regardless of the presence of the outer head contour, infants preferred upright over inverted two-tone face images only when local features were highly visible (Experiment 1a).

Range- and domain-specific exaggeration of facial speech.

Is it possible to exaggerate the different ways in which people talk, just as we can caricature their faces? In this paper, we exaggerate animated facial movement to investigate how the emotional manner of speech is conveyed. Range-specific exaggerations selectively emphasized emotional manner whereas domain-specific exaggerations of differences in duration did not. Range-specific exaggeration relative to a time-locked average was more effective than absolute exaggeration of differences from the static, neutral face, despite smaller absolute differences in movement.