You've Got the Cutest ... Monkey Face? [baby]

You've Got the Cutest ... Monkey Face?

Written by Daniel J. DeNoon

When looking at monkey faces, adults have a hard time telling one animal from another. Young babies have no such problem -- but they lose this ability by the time they are nine months old.

Researchers studying mental development report the findings in the May 17 issue of Science magazine. One of the study authors is Michelle de Haan, PhD, of the Institute of Child Health at University College in London.

"There are these really remarkable changes in the first year of life in the face-processing system," de Haan says in a news release.

People usually think of babies as gaining more and more mental function, not as losing abilities as the mature. But there's a price to pay. Earlier studies showed that as babies get better at learning their native language, they lose the ability to hear differences between sounds spoken in a foreign tongue.

The new study shows that the same thing happens as babies get better at recognizing human faces.

"We usually think about development as a process of gaining skills," de Haan says. "What is surprising about this case is that babies seem to be losing ability with age. This is probably a reflection of the brain's 'tuning in' to the perceptual differences that are most important for telling human faces apart, and losing the ability to detect those differences that are not so useful."

The researchers note that this ability isn't lost forever. People can still use their brains to learn the difference between one monkey face and another.

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