Differential age-related changes in N170 responses to upright faces, inverted faces, and eyes in Japanese children

The main objectives of this study were to investigate the development of face perception in Japanese children, focusing on the changes in face processing strategies (holistic and/or configural vs. feature-based) that occur during childhood. To achieve this, we analyzed the face-related N170 component, evoked by upright face, inverted face, and eyes stimuli in 82 Japanese children aged between 8- and 13-years-old. During the experiment, the children were asked to perform a target detection task in which they were told to press a button when they saw images of faces or kettles with mustaches, glasses, and fake noses; i.e., an implicit face perception task. The N170 signals observed after the presentation of the upright face stimuli were longer in duration and/or had at least two peaks in the 8–11-year-old children, whereas those seen in the 12–13-year-old children were sharp and only had a single peak. N170 latency was significantly longer after the presentation of the eyes stimuli than after the presentation of the upright face stimuli in the 10- and 12-year-old children. In addition, significant differences in N170 latency were observed among all three stimulus types in the 13-year-old children. N170 amplitude was significantly greater after the presentation of the eyes stimuli than after the presentation of the upright face stimuli in the 8–10- and 12-year-old children. The results of the present study indicate that the upright face stimuli were processed using holistic and/or configural processing by the 13-year-old children.