During their first year, infants attune to the faces and language(s) that are frequent in their environment. The present study investigates the impact of language familiarity on how French-learning 9- and 12-month-olds recognize own-race faces. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized with the talking face of a Caucasian bilingual German-French speaker reciting a nursery rhyme in French (native condition) or in German (non-native condition). In the test phase, infants' face recognition was tested by presenting a picture of the speaker's face they were familiarized with, side by side with a novel face. At 9 and 12 months, neither infants in the native condition nor the ones in the non-native condition clearly recognized the speaker's face. In Experiment 2, we familiarized infants with the still picture of the speaker's face, along with the auditory speech stream. This time, both 9- and 12-month-olds recognized the face of the speaker they had been familiarized with, but only if she spoke in their native language. This study shows that at least from 9 months of age, language modulates the way faces are recognized.
© 2021 International Congress of Infant Studies (ICIS).