Race-based perceptual asymmetries underlying face processing in infancy

Adults process other-race faces differently than own-race faces. For instance, a single other-race face in an array of own-race faces attracts Caucasians’ attention, but a single own-race face among other-race faces does not. This perceptual asymmetry has been explained by the presence of an other-race feature in other-race faces and its absence in own-race faces; this difference is thought to underlie race-based differences in face processing. We examined the developmental origins of this mechanism in two groups of Caucasian 9-month-olds. Infants in the experimental group exhibited a preference for a pattern containing a single Asian face among seven Caucasian faces over a pattern containing a single Caucasian face among seven Asian faces. This preference was not driven by the majority of elements in the images, because a control group of infants failed to exhibit a preference between homogeneous patterns containing eight Caucasian versus eight Asian faces. The results demonstrate that an other-race face among own-race faces attracts infants’ attention but not vice versa. This perceptual asymmetry suggests that the other-race feature is available to Caucasians by 9 months of age, thereby indicating that mechanisms of specialization in face processing originate early in life.

[1]  Gillian Rhodes,et al.  Expert face coding: Configural and component coding of own-race and other-race faces , 2006, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[2]  J. Brigham,et al.  Thirty years of investigating the own-race bias in memory for faces: A meta-analytic review , 2001 .

[3]  P. Quinn,et al.  Visual pop-out in young infants: Convergent evidence and an extension , 1998 .

[4]  James W. Tanaka,et al.  The Other-Race Effect in Infancy: Evidence Using a Morphing Technique. , 2007, Infancy : the official journal of the International Society on Infant Studies.

[5]  P. Ekman,et al.  Matsumoto and Ekman's Japanese and Caucasian Facial Expressions of Emotion (JACFEE): Reliability Data and Cross-National Differences , 1997 .

[6]  A Treisman,et al.  Feature analysis in early vision: evidence from search asymmetries. , 1988, Psychological review.

[7]  James W Tanaka,et al.  An Encoding Advantage for Own-Race versus Other-Race Faces , 2003, Perception.

[8]  O. Pascalis,et al.  The Other-Race Effect Develops During Infancy , 2007, Psychological science.

[9]  O. Pascalis,et al.  Is Face Processing Species-Specific During the First Year of Life? , 2002, Science.

[10]  J. Hulleman,et al.  Concavities as basic features in visual search: Evidence from search asymmetries , 2000, Perception & psychophysics.

[11]  O. Pascalis,et al.  Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces. , 2005, Developmental science.

[12]  Ken Nakayama,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article Priming Race in Biracial Observers Affects Visual Search , 2022 .

[13]  Otto H. MacLin,et al.  Racial categorization of faces: The ambiguous race face effect. , 2001 .

[14]  D. Levin.  CLASSIFYING FACES BY RACE : THE STRUCTURE OF FACE CATEGORIES , 1996 .

[15]  Textons, visual pop-out effects, and object recognition in infancy. , 1992, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[16]  P. Kuhl,et al.  Early Speech Perception and Later Language Development: Implications for the "Critical Period" , 2005 .

[17]  Y. Bar-Haim,et al.  Nature and Nurture in Own-Race Face Processing , 2006, Psychological science.

[18]  J. Joseph,et al.  Infants' perception of information along object boundaries: concavities versus convexities. , 2006, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[19]  S. de Schonen,et al.  Recognition of own-race and other-race faces by three-month-old infants. , 2004, Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines.

[20]  C. Meissner,et al.  Recognition of faces of ingroup and outgroup children and adults. , 2006, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[21]  D. Levin.  Race as a visual feature: using visual search and perceptual discrimination tasks to understand face categories and the cross-race recognition deficit. , 2000, Journal of experimental psychology. General.