ABSTRACT
Given the multiplicity of perceptual skills we have for perceiving faces and the many brain regions involved in face perception, a natural question concerns how this organisation comes about. Here, we will begin by asking to what extent the human infant comes into the world prepared to see faces, and how skills of face perception and recognition develop over the first few months of life and later during childhood. Observations of typical and atypical development interact with issues raised elsewhere in the book and lead us, later in this chapter, to look more closely at the question of whether faces have a ‘special’ status for the human brain.
