Figure 13.

Early visual experience. (a) Primate infants look at faces early in development. Photos provided by (left) J. Gamble and (right) M.S. Livingstone. (b) Early visual experience of faces (red) and hands (blue) by human infants (Fausey et al. 2016; reproduced with permission). While early visual experience comprises primarily a limited number of faces (i.e., caregivers), overall visual human experience shifts to include hands as babies become more mobile and interact with the environment. The prominence of hands in early experience of human infants parallels our finding that face-deprived monkeys preferentially look at hands in the absence of visually experiencing faces. It remains to be resolved whether a comparable shift of visual experience from faces to hands is present in normally reared monkeys.