recognition between children and adults is due to a precise development of facial perception. The cause for this continuing development is proposed to be an ongoing experience with faces. Developmental issues Several developmental issues manifest as a decreased capacity for facial recognition. Using what is known about the role of the fusiform gyrus, research has shown that impaired social development along the autism spectrum is accompanied by a behavioral marker where these individuals tend to look away from faces, and a neurological marker characterized by decreased neural activity in the fusiform gyrus. Similarly, those with developmental prosopagnosia (DP) struggle with facial recognition to the extent they are often unable to identify even their own faces. Many studies report that around 2% of the world’s population have developmental prosopagnosia, and that individuals with DP have a family history of the trait. Individuals with DP are behaviorally indistinguishable from those with physical damage or lesions on the fusiform gyrus, again implicating its importance to facial recognition. Despite those with DP or neurological damage, there remains a large variability in facial recognition ability in the total population. It is unknown what accounts for the differences in facial recognition ability, whether it is a biological or environmental disposition. Recent research analyzing identical and fraternal twins showed that facial recognition was significantly higher correlated in identical twins, suggesting a strong genetic component to individual differences in facial recognition ability. Language development Pattern recognition in language acquisition Recent research reveals that infant language acquisition is linked to cognitive pattern recognition. Unlike classical nativist and behavioral theories of language development, scientists now believe that language is a learned skill. Studies at the Hebrew University and the University of Sydney both show a strong correlation between the ability to identify visual patterns and to learn a new language. Children with high shape recognition showed better grammar knowledge, even when controlling for the effects of intelligence and memory capacity. This is supported by the theory that language learning is based on statistical learning, the process by which infants perceive common combinations of sounds and words in language and use them to inform future speech production. Phonological development The first step in infant language acquisition is to decipher between the most basic sound units of their native language. This includes every consonant, every short and long vowel sound, and any additional letter combinations like "th" and "ph" in English. These