Face Perception across the Life-Span

Face perception is one of the most highly developed visual skills in humans. This complex ability develops across the life-span, steeply rising in infancy, refining across childhood and adolescence, reaching highest levels in adulthood and declining in old age. As such, development of face perception comprises sensory (e.g., mechanisms of holistic, configural and featural perception), cognitive (e.g., memory, processing speed, attentional control), and also emotional and social (e.g. reading and interpreting facial expression) factors. Whereas our understanding of specific functional domains involved in face perception is growing, there is increasing demand for a multidisciplinary approach toward a more integrated view, describing how face perception ability relates to and develops with other domains of sensory and cognitive functioning.


This Research Topic will center on the multi-domain nature of face perception and its development, thereby highlighting new research opportunities to improve our understanding of face perception ability by taking a life-span and multidisciplinary perspective. We aim to bring together a collection of papers to provide a shot of the current state of the art of theorizing and research on the dynamics of face perception development. We are open to empirical work, theoretical and conceptual pieces, reviews, opinion articles, and commentaries that help to advance our understanding of face perception development across all stages of the life-span.