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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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