The potential role of robust face representations learned within families when searching for one’s child in a crowd

TL;DR

Parents can find their child's face faster than other children's faces in a crowd, likely due to strong family-based face recognition.

Contribution

This study experimentally demonstrates faster visual search for one's child's face compared to other children's faces.

Findings

Parents identified their child's face faster than other children's faces.

Parents also found their own and spouse's faces faster than other adults' faces.

Search times for family faces increased with more faces, indicating serial attentional processing.

Abstract

Own child’s face is one of the most socially salient stimuli for parents, and a faster search for it than for other children’s faces may help provide warmer and more sensitive care. However, it has not been experimentally examined whether parents find their child’s face faster. In addition, although own child’s face is specially processed, the search time for own child’s face may be similar to that for other socially salient stimuli, such as own or spouse’s faces. This study tested these possibilities using a visual search paradigm. Participants (parents) searched for their child’s, own, spouse’s, other child’s, same-sex adult’s, or opposite-sex adult’s faces as search targets. Our findings indicate that both mothers and fathers identified their child’s face more quickly than other children’s faces. Similarly, parents found their own and spouse’s faces more quickly than other adults’ faces. Moreover, the search time for family members’ faces increased with the number of faces on the search display, suggesting an attentional serial search. These results suggest that robust face representations learned within families and close relationships can support reduced search times for family members’ faces.

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