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Faces are special to infants. Infants look longer at faces than objects, human faces than non-human faces, and upright faces compared to inverted faces. The objective of this study was to see if infants demonstrated signs of pareidolia. Pareidolia is the ability to see a face in a nonface object, such as a face in a cloud. Previous research has shown that adults see faces in everyday objects, but less is known about infants' perception of such images. In the present study, infants 7-9 months old (N = 47) were tested. Infants were shown eight images, which adults had ordered from most face-like to least face-like, over 16 trials. An upright and inverted version of each image was presented side by side to infants on each trial. Infants’ looking times to each side was recorded. It was reasoned that infants would show a reliable preference for the upright version of a stimulus if they perceived a face in that stimulus. It was found that infants showed an upright preference for three of the eight stimuli, two that were deemed most face-like (i.e., a color photo of a female face, and a black and white schematic face) and one grouped as moderately face-like (i.e., a black and white Mooney image that could be perceived as either a face or a man playing a saxophone). From these results, we conclude that infants can perceive a face, but only in images that are the most face-like. The results suggest that infants may experience some form of pareidolia but not to the same extent as adults do. Future studies should further investigate the development of pareidolia infants and children. INFANT PERCEPTION OF FACES 3 Infants' Perception of Faces in Face-Like and Ambiguous Images Faces are special to adults. It is generally believed that adults are experts in face recognition. In recognizing faces, adults use several processes (Maurer, Le Grand, and Mondloch 2002). Configural processing involves organizing and relating facial features to one another (Ichikawa et al., 2011), whereas featural processing involves attending to individual facial features, but not to the relations among those features. It is believed that processing a face configurally is a marker of expertise in face processing (Maurer, Le Grand, and Mondloch (2002). Adults process upright faces configurally but process inverted faces featurally (e.g., Diamond & Carey, 1986; Maurer, Le Grand, & Mondloch, 2002; Rakover, 2013). Adults also have the capability to see faces in everyday objects around them (Ichikawa, Kanazawa, & Yamaguchi, 2011; Kato & Mugitani, 2015). For example, sometimes we can see a face in the clouds or in the arrangement of pepperoni on our pizza. This phenomenon is known as pareidolia. The exact reason for pareidolia is unknown, but it is believed that it is related to adults' expertise in face processing and some form of configural processing. Ichikawa et al. also believe it is related to adults' tendency to perceive a pair of eyes in non-face objects (Ichikawa et al., 2011). Faces are also special to infants. It is obvious to anyone who has interacted with infants that they develop a fascination with faces at an early age. Research indicates that during the first year of life infants show a preference for looking at human faces over animal faces (Di Giorgio, Méary, Pascalis & Simion, 2013; Jakobson, Umstead & Simpson, 2016). Infants also prefer faces over other objects; when presented pictures of faces and toys simultaneously, infants direct their gazes toward faces before other stimuli and faces hold their attention longer (DeNicola, Holt, Lambert & Cashon, 2013; Gliga, Elsabbagh, Andravizo & Johnson, 2009; Libertus & Needham, INFANT PERCEPTION OF FACES 4 2014). Moreover, like adults, infants respond differently to upright faces compared to an inverted face (Cashon & Holt, 2015). By around 7 months of age, infants recognize an individual face by the specific combination of eyes, nose, and mouth, but only if the face is upright (Cohen & Cashon, 2001). However, younger infants show no difference in the way they process upright and inverted faces (Cashon & Cohen, 2004). It is clear from this research that faces—specifically upright faces--are significant to infants and that an adult-like face expertise in processing has developed by 7 months. This bears the question of pareidolia. Is it possible that pareidolia occurs in infancy? There are only two known studies that have tested this question (Otsuka, Hill, Kanazawa, Yamaguchi & Spehar, 2012; Kobayashi, Otsuka, Nakato, Kanazawa, Yamaguchi, & Kakigi, 2012). Both studies used a preferential looking paradigm to determine if infants perceived faces in the stimuli. In these studies, infants were shown upright and inverted versions of a face-like stimulus side by side on a monitor. It was reasoned by the researchers that because infants prefer looking at upright faces over inverted faces, infants would show a preference for the upright image if they perceived a face in the stimulus. In one study of 3-4 month olds, Otsuka et al. (2012) examined whether infants perceived a face in Mooney images. A Mooney image is a two toned ambiguous stimulus that can be perceived as a face or another image depending on how it is viewed. Otsuka et al. found that infants preferred the upright over inverted Mooney images, suggesting that they perceived the faces in those ambiguous stimuli. In a second study, Kobayashi et al. (2012) investigated 7-8 month-old infants' perception of Arcimboldo paintings. These paintings are images of fruits and vegetables arranged to resemble a face if viewed in one orientation and a bowl of fruits and vegetables if viewed in the other orientation. Kobayashi et al. found the infants showed a preference for the orientation that resembled a face. Together, these INFANT PERCEPTION OF FACES 5 two studies suggest that infants may experience pareidolia. However, the stimuli used in these studies were designed to look like faces. One question that remains is would infants detect faces in stimuli that appear less face-like? In the present study, we addressed this question by testing 7-9 month-old infants on their ability to see a face in stimuli that ranged from a realistic face image to more ambiguous, less face-like stimuli. Eight different stimuli were selected to be presented to participants (see Figure 1). The first stimulus was a realistic human face obtained from the NimStim database (Tottenham et al., 2009). We chose this stimulus as a control. At the age of 7 months infants should exhibit a preference for upright over inverted real human faces (for review, see Cashon & Holt, 2015). If our results were to show that infants did not prefer the upright version of this face compared to the inverted one then we would know there was a flaw in our setup. The second stimulus we selected was a Schematic face. This image resembles a paddle with the features of a smiling face on it (e.g. eyes, nose, and mouth). This stimulus has been used in a number of studies with infants to examine whether newborns and infants have a preference for face-like images (Goren, Sarty, & Wu, 1975; Johnson, Dziurawiec, Ellis & Morton, 1991). For example, in a classic study by Goren, Sarty and Wu (1975), the experimenters presented four different versions of the Schematic face to newborns: the original schematic, a moderately scrambled face, a scrambled face and a blank face. They measured how far the neonates would turn their heads and their eyes in order to follow the images as they moved. The researchers found infants followed the original Schematic face significantly farther than the other three stimuli. This and other similar findings have been taken as evidence that newborns have a preference for face-like images. INFANT PERCEPTION OF FACES 6 Based on the previous research by Kobayashi et al. (2012) and Otsuka at al. (2012) we also included a Mooney face and an Arcimboldo painting. The Mooney face chosen is a twotoned image that, when viewed in the upright orientation, can be viewed as a female face or a profile of a man playing a saxophone. The Arcimboldo painting that was chosen was one of the stimuli used by Kobayashi et al. In one orientation, it looks like a bowl of vegetables; in the other, the collection of vegetable resembles a face. The four remaining stimuli were chosen because they are less clearly face-like. The fifth stimulus is a grouping of trees that subtly outlines the features of a female face. The sixth is a photograph of a boulder with carvings that resemble the profile view of a man's face. The seventh is a photo of a cloud with shadows that could be perceived as two eyes and a mouth. The last stimulus is a Gaussian noise image that has slight shadows where eyes and a mouth would be in a face. To estimate how adults viewed these images, 13 adults were shown photographs of the stimuli and asked to order them from "most like a face to least like a face." The mean rankings were calculated for each stimulus. The order of face-likeness based on the mean rankings was: Realistic Face (M = 1, SD = 0), Schematic Face (M = 2.54, SD = 1.03), Tree (M = 3.15, SD = 1.25), Mooney (M = 4.00, SD = 0.77), Vegetable (M = 5.00, SD = 1.43), Rock (M = 6.00, SD = 0.77), Cloud (M = 6.62, SD = 0.83), Gaussian Noise (M = 7.69, SD = 0.67). There are several possible outcomes for this study. Based on previous research with infants, we predict that infants will show an upright preference for the realistic human face, schematic face, Mooney, and Arcimboldo. Additionally, because adults ranked the tree face stimulus high, we thought it was possible that infants may perceive a face in the tree image as INFANT PERCEPTION OF FACES 7 well. However, if infants are like adults and also experience pareidolia, infants should show an upright stimulus preference for all eight stimuli.

Infants' perception of faces in face-like and ambiguous images.