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Article
The Development of Sex Category Representation in Infancy: Matching Of Faces and Bodies
Developmental Psychology (2015)
  • Alyson J. Chroust, University of Kentucky
  • Ashley Kangas, University of Kentucky
  • Nicole Zieber, University of Kentucky
  • Ramesh S. Bhatt, University of Kentucky
Abstract
Sex is a significant social category, and adults derive information about it from both faces and bodies. Research indicates that young infants process sex category information in faces. However, no prior study has examined whether infants derive sex categories from bodies and match faces and bodies in terms of sex. In the current study, 5-month-olds exhibited a preference between sex congruent (face and body of the same sex) versus sex-incongruent (face and body belonging to different genders) images. In contrast, 3.5-month-olds failed to exhibit a preference. Thus, 5-month-olds process sex information from bodies and match it to facial information. However, younger infants’ failure to match suggests that there is a developmental change between 3.5 and 5 months of age in the processing of sex categories. These results indicate that rapid developmental changes lead to fairly sophisticated social information processing quite early in life.
Keywords
  • gender perception,
  • gender matching,
  • body knowledge,
  • face processing,
  • infancy
Publication Date
March, 2015
DOI
10.1037/a0038743
Publisher Statement
This document is an author manuscript from PMCIt is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the authoritative document published in the APA journal. Please do not copy or cite without author's permission. The final article is available, upon publication, at: 10.1037/a0038743
Citation Information
Alyson J. Chroust, Ashley Kangas, Nicole Zieber and Ramesh S. Bhatt. "The Development of Sex Category Representation in Infancy: Matching Of Faces and Bodies" Developmental Psychology Vol. 51 Iss. 3 (2015) p. 346 - 352 ISSN: 1939-0599
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/alyson-chroust/24/