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Fig. 10.17. Mother preferences based on both internal and external features. Initially, the prenatally trained FSA responds to both women well, with no significant difference (p = 0.28; plots a,b in the row labeled "FSA-0"). The response is primarily due to the internal facial features (c,d), although the hair and one of the eyes also align into a three-dot pattern in both figures, causing weak spurious activation (a,b). Subsequently, image (a), designated as the mother, was presented in 25% of the postnatal learning iterations, while image (b), the stranger, was not presented at all. After 500 iterations (bottom row), the response to the mother is significantly greater than to the stranger (p = 0.001). This result replicates the mother preference found by Pascalis et al. (1995) in infants 3-9 days old. The same results are found in the counterbalancing condition -- when trained on face (b) as the mother, (b) becomes preferred (p = 0.002; not shown). After training with real faces, there is no longer any FSA response to the facial features alone (c,d), which replicates Pascalis et al.'s (1995) finding that newborns no longer preferred their mother when her face outline was covered. Importantly, no preference is found for the face outline alone either (e,f) suggesting that face learning in HLISSOM is holistic. This conclusion is contrary to Pascalis et al.'s (1995) conclusion but consistent with face learning in adults (Farah et al. 1998).