Abstract
Facial features appear to be a prominent kinship cue for ascribing relatedness among human individuals. Although there is evidence that adults can detect kinship in unrelated and unfamiliar individual’s faces, it remains to be seen whether people already possess the ability when they are young. To further understand the development of this skill, we explored children’s ability to detect parent-offspring resemblance in unrelated and unfamiliar faces. To this end, we tested approximately 140 children, aged 5–11, in two photo-matching tasks. We used a procedure that asked them to match one neonate’s face to one of three adults’ faces (Task 1), or to match one adult’s face to one of three neonate’s faces (Task 2). Our findings reveal asymmetrical performance, depending on the tasks assigned (performance of Task 2 is stronger than for Task 1), and on the sex of individuals who made up the parent-offspring pair (male parents are better matched with neonates than female parents, and boys are better matched than girls). The picture that emerges from our study is, on one hand, that the ability to detect kinship is already present at the age of five but continues to improve as one gets older, and on the other, that perception of parent-offspring facial resemblance varies according to the appraisers’ characteristics.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Marie-Cécile Athenoux-Durand, and all the schoolchildren from the Vif and Gua schools (part of the academy of Grenoble, France) who participated in the experiment. We would also like to give special thanks to Benjamin de Vulpillières for his constructive discussions and comments about the manuscript. Thanks also to the four anonymous reviewers for their detailed suggestions and comments, which improved the readability of the paper. This research was financed by the French CNRS and by a grant from the French National Research Agency (ANR Family’Air). The study was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki; it was conducted with the understanding and written consent of each participant’s parents, and was approved by the local ethics board (CNRS and Grenoble University). The study complies with all applicable French laws.
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Kaminski, G., Gentaz, E. & Mazens, K. Development of children’s ability to detect kinship through facial resemblance. Anim Cogn 15, 421–427 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-011-0461-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-011-0461-y