| 摘要: | 臉孔辨認是社交活動的重要基礎。近年來的研究揭示了臉孔辨認的發展可能要到兒童期晚期才完成。有學者指出，組態式臉孔辨認的發展時間較特徵式臉孔辨認來得較晚，可能要到學齡期晚期才接近成人的水準。另外，已有研究指出臉孔辨認能力的表現與個體之同理心程度有一定的關聯，但鮮少有研究探討臉孔辨認的發展與兒童同理心的關聯性。因此，本研究目的在於，1) 探討台灣地區學齡期兒童的臉孔組態辨認與特徵臉孔辨認的發展；2) 探討臉孔辨認能力與同理心間的關聯性。我們招收了33位台灣成年人與72位兒童，兒童組依年齡分為7-8歲、9-10歲、11-12歲三組。每位參與者接受兩項作業：1) 電腦化的臉孔區辨作業，讓受試者觀察並區辨台灣及白人臉孔圖片，臉孔圖片經由不同操弄以分別檢驗特徵與組態臉孔辨認 (不同身分、替換眼睛、增加眼距、嘴巴上提)；2) 同理心問卷施測，由紙筆的方式進行；成人組由受試者本人作答，兒童組則由其家長或監護人代為作答。我們的實驗結果顯示，在臉孔區辨作業上，高年齡組整體表現較低年齡組別佳，同時，女性整體表現比男性好；在操弄上，臉孔區辨正確率呈現了以 “不同身分” 為最簡單，接著 “替換眼睛”、 “增加眼距”、 “嘴巴上提”的難度梯度，種族在本實驗中並未顯示出顯著的效果。本研究結果並不支持臉孔組態辨認發展比特徵臉孔辨認緩慢，因為所有兒童組別的兩種臉孔辨認能力皆未達成人水準，表示兩種能力皆仍然在發展中。關於同理心與臉孔辨認能力的相關性，本研究結果顯示在不同性別、年齡組別上，除了男孩的同理心分數顯示出了與白人臉孔“不同身分”的操弄正確率有顯著負相關外，各組皆分別表現出了與不同白人臉孔項目正確率和同理心間的顯著正相關。
Face recognition is fundamental to social interactions. Recent studies revealed that the ability to process faces may take an entire childhood to fully develop. This could be due to one of the face recognition routes, configural face processing, is still maturing in school-age children. Up to date, most of the studies are based on Caucasian children in western society, and the relation between face processing and empathy in children is rarely studied. Thus, the present study aims to investigate whether configural face processing develops more slowly than featural face processing in Taiwanese children, and the correlation between an individual’s empathy score and the performance of face processing. Using a 2AFC face matching task, we tested 33 Taiwanese adults’, and 72 children’s ability to discriminate oval-cropped Taiwanese and Caucasian faces. Four different manipulations on featural processing, configural processing, or both were included (i.e., change identity, change eyes, widen eye spacing, and move up mouth). The participants also completed the Empathy Quotient (EQ) questionnaire. The results of face discrimination task showed a significant age group main effect that adults were better than children in all conditions, and a gender main effect that females performed better than males. Moreover, the accuracy of the “change identity” was the highest, followed by the “change eyes” and the “widen eye spacing” conditions; the “move up mouth” condition was the most difficult one among all, regardless of race. In sum, our results show that both configural face processing and featural face processing are still developing in Taiwanese school-age children. With regard to the correlations between EQ and face recognition, the adults’ empathy score positively correlated with the accuracy of one of the Caucasian face condition for both genders. In children, girls showed a positive correlation between empathy and accuracy for the Caucasian condition; however, boys showed a negative correlation between empathy score and the Caucasian “Change identity” condition. |
