FaceID… not just about your iPhone

Make sure that nothing is covering your face

Make sure that your eyes, nose, and mouth are fully visible to the TrueDepth camera. Face ID doesn't work if anything is covering your mouth and nose, like a face mask. If you're wearing a face mask, you'll be asked to enter your passcode automatically after swiping up.

…The results indicate that responses to familiar versus unfamiliar faces, but not familiar versus unfamiliar objects, are related to the child’s age. Children of all ages showed differential responses to familiar versus unfamiliar objects, with larger amplitude Nc and P400 components to the unfamiliar toy than to the familiar toy.

…In contrast, children’s responses to familiar and unfamiliar faces varied as a function of the age of the child. The youngest children, between 18 and 24 months of age, showed greater ERP responses to the mother’s face than to a stranger’s face.

…Children between 24 and 45 months of age did not show differential brain activity in response to a mother’s and a stranger’s faces, suggesting that this may be a transitional point in development.

It can be expected, from a developmental perspective, that the brain systems involved in social behaviors would change in conjunction with the formation of the attachment relationships. For example, the primary caregiver plays an increasingly important role in the life of the child as the relationship between the infant and mother progresses. If social–emotional behavioral changes can be related to brain functioning, the changing role of the mother should be apparent in developmental changes in neural correlates of cognitive and social responses to the primary caregiver.

…The present results provide support for the view that face processing changes with increased expertise for faces. The developmental trajectory of the electrophysiological response to faces in the present study parallels developmental changes in the significance of different kinds of faces for children. During the months when the primary attachment relationship is being forged, infants and toddlers can be thought of as forming expertise for a specific face — that of the primary caregiver — as the person with whom the child is forming a special bond. After the establishment of this relationship, children can be thought of as more general “face experts,” and can devote additional resources to learning about other faces.

…It is important to note that in the present study only the response to the mother’s face varied with age. Thus, it is not the case that younger toddlers are disinterested in strangers’ faces. Instead, it appears that children of all ages attend equally to strangers, but that younger children devote an especially large amount of attention to their mother’s face as well. This finding is consistent with the well-established finding that infants and young children are very interested in faces in general from a very early age (Goren, Sarty, & Wu, 1975).

…Overall, our results suggest that face processing is a developmental phenomenon. The neural correlates of face recognition vary with children’s age, and the degree of attentional resources they devote to processing faces may differ depending on the significance of the face during a particular point in development. Future studies should examine these age-related changes longitudinally, and with consideration for the social and cognitive tasks with which the child is engaged.


The difficulty in determining what facial expression a person is exhibiting behind a mask may present challenges for infants and young children as they depend on their parents’ facial expressions, coupled with tone and/or voice to regulate their reactions toward others. Health professionals should understand the potential effects of prolonged mask wearing to minimise any potential long-term impact on neonatal development and optimise psychological outcomes for babies, infants, children and their parents.