Four experiments investigated newborns' ability to discriminate, recognize, and learn visual information embedded in the schematic face-like patterns preferred at birth. Results indicated that newborns discriminated face-like stimuli relying on their internal features and recognized a perceptual invariance between face-like configurations in conditions of low and high-perceptual variability of their inner elements. The preferred structure schematically defining a face does not constrain newborns' face learning processes. (Author/KB)