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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		The role of 'perceptual narrowing' in human development
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2016-02-18 00:00:00
	Description:		Have you ever heard the term ‘perceptual narrowing’? It basically refers to the phenomenon where one’s perception is broad from birth, but narrows in time due to experience. Michael Sheehan, a behavioral ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, says it’s been previously tested with primate faces. "Primates in general when they’re infants, they are really interested in anything that’s vaguely primate-like face and over time, they become more and more attuned and sort of specialized for learning the feature that are relevant to the particular face of their species. And even so to their population." Sheehan says a similar process happens when humans learn language. "So you start out being able to learn any language possible, right? And over time, you focus in on those sounds that you hear the most regularly. And then you become specialized learning one language. The same thing happens with faces – human infants are better at telling apart primate faces than adults are because of the fact that we become more specialized looking at humans in particular."
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