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There are several lines of evidence which suggests that, since birth, the human system detects social agents on the basis of at least two properties: the presence of a face and the way they move. This chapter reviews the infant research on the origin of brain specialization for social stimuli and on the role of innate mechanisms and perceptual experience in shaping the development of the social brain. Two lines of convergent evidence on face detection and biological motion detection will be presented to demonstrate the innate predispositions of the human system to detect social stimuli at birth. As for face detection, experiments will be presented to demonstrate that, by virtue of nonspecific attentional biases, a very coarse template of faces become active at birth. As for biological motion detection, studies will be presented to demonstrate that, since birth, the human system is able to detect social stimuli on the basis of …