Servicenavigation

Project Details

Back

Projekt Print View

Look who s talking: Interactions between face processing and speech perception during perceptual narrowing in monolingual and bilingual German and French infants

Subject Area Developmental and Educational Psychology
Term from 2018 to 2022
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 389636291
 
Final Report Year 2023

Final Report Abstract

In our project, we investigated whether and how the assumed interaction between face and speech processing in infancy is shaped by perceptual narrowing and whether this interaction affects the emergence of social preferences and social learning in infants. Our unique collaboration between French and German baby labs enabled us to address these questions by employing two typologically distinct languages within a single face category. Our results clearly demonstrated an interaction between face and language processing that is affected by perceptual narrowing. The findings revealed that 9- and 12-month-old infants, who had undergone perceptual narrowing in face and language processing, could only recognize an own-race face displayed as a picture (not as a video) when presented simultaneously with native language stimuli. Recognition failed when the own-race face was paired with a non-native language, even though recognition was possible in the absence of language stimuli. Interestingly, even after perceptual narrowing, infants could differentiate other-race faces when presented concurrently with non-native language, but not with native language. Without language stimuli, infants of that age were unable to distinguish among other-race faces. These results suggest that the congruency between face and language, whether both are native or non-native, facilitates face differentiation, while incongruency hinders it. The congruency of the face and language system also appears to be crucial for infants' social preferences. According to Krasotkina et al., 3-month-olds exhibited a preference for sequences consisting of ownrace faces and native language sentences, as well as other-race faces and non-native language sentences, opposed to incongruent combinations. This indicates that even at 3 months, infants expect an own-race face to speak their native language and another-race face to speak a nonnative language, suggesting a multimodal representation of the human face at that age. A specific preference for the congruent combination of native face and native language emerged in older infants in an uncertain learning condition. In this situation, older infants (11 to 20 months) followed and trusted the gaze of a person sharing the same face race and language. At this age, infants no longer showed a preference for another-race faces speaking a non-native language. Overall, our results underscore the crucial role of perceptual narrowing in infants' processing of face race and language when both are presented simultaneously. We found that the congruency or incongruency between face and language stimuli in terms of nativeness play a key role in infants' face differentiation, social preferences, and learning, especially in uncertain situations. We are currently preparing an integrative review about these new insights into the factors influencing the processing of simultaneously presented face and language stimuli. Future research should analyze the interplay of these factors deeper, exploring, for instance, how infants learn and recognize talking faces presented dynamically, such as through videos.

Publications

 
 

Additional Information

© 2025 DFG Disclaimer / Copyright / Privacy Policy

Textvergrößerung und Kontrastanpassung