ISSN : 1229-0718
In this article theories put forward to explain the age differences in face recognition performance are reviewed. Two neuropsychological explanations (development of hemisphere specialization and maturational changes) and four information processing explanations (depth of face processing, pattern of feature salience, development of face schema, and encoding shift) are described and evaluated for their tenability in light of reported findings. Explanations specifically designed to account for the developmental dip are also discussed. These explanations failed to receive sufficient empirical support. Thus an alternative explanation in terms of increasing efficiency of encoding is proposed.