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  • From: "alex stevenson" <alexs19 AT hotmail.com>
  • To: monkeywire AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [monkeywire] Babies better than adults at recognizing monkeys
  • Date: Sat, 25 May 2002 12:19:08 +0000

The Daily Yomiuri
No. 18586
Sunday, May 19, 2002


Researchers: Babies better than adults at recognizing monkeys

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Researchers at the University of Sheffield in Britain have found that babies are better than adults at recognizing monkeys' faces, the U.S. magazine "Science" reported in its issue released Friday.
The research was based on the premise that people spend less time looking at pictures of faces they have previously seen, and more time looking at unfamiliar faces.
The research had adults and 30 babies aged 6 months look at pictures of human and monkey faces, and timed how long each person spent looking at each face.
Adults spent more time looking at unfamiliar human faces than at faces they had seen before, but when presented with pictures of monkeys' faces they spent almost the same length of time when looking at monkeys they had seen before and those they had not. The researchers assumed this was because the adults failed to recognize the monkeys they had seen before.
Six-month old babies, however, spent a longer period of time looking at the faces of both monkeys and humans they had not seen before, than they did when looking at monkeys and people they had seen earlier.
According to the group, the results proved that the babies recognized the monkeys they had seen before, and therefore were better at distinguishing monkeys' faces than adults.
Nine-month-old babies, however, could not recognize such differences, the report stated.
A member of the group said,"Between the ages of 6 and 9 months it seems babies begin to mainly remember faces of the same species."

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  • [monkeywire] Babies better than adults at recognizing monkeys, alex stevenson, 05/25/2002

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