Why Faces Are Not Special to Newborns: An Alternative Account of the Face Preference

Newborns' visual preference for faces might be regarded as a proof of the existence of a specific innate bias toward this class of stimuli. However, recent research has shown that this putatively face-specific phenomenon might be explained as the result of the combined effect of nonspecific perceptual constraints that stem from the general properties of visual processing shortly after birth. General, nonspecific biases may tune the system toward certain aspects of the external environment, allowing, through experience, the emergence of increasingly specialized processes devoted to faces.