Electrophysiological Correlates of Processing Own- and Other-Race Faces

Abstract

Most adults have more experience in identifying faces of their own race than in identifying faces from another race, and thus may be considered as own-race face experts. This effect was investigated by recording and analyzing ERPs as well as induced gamma oscillations. The race modulation occurred post the stage of structural processing revealed by N170. Larger P2 component and induced gamma activity for own-race than other-race faces could be associated with more elaborate processing on the basis of configural computation due to more experience that we have for own-race faces.

Do neural correlates of face expertise vary with task demands? Event-related potential correlates of own- and other-race face inversion

“…The N170 inversion effect has been suggested to reflect perceptual expertise for a given class of stimuli (Rossion et al, 2002), and larger effects for own-race faces are therefore well in line with expertise accounts of the own-race bias (e.g., Tanaka et al, 2004; Rossion and Michel, 2011). The present finding is also in line with those previous studies that observed a larger N170 FIE for own-race faces (Vizioli et al, 2010a; Caharel et al, 2011), but not with others that did not (Wiese et al, 2009; Chen et al, 2013). While the reason for this discrepancy remains somewhat unclear, it may be related to the fact that Chen et al (2013) tested exclusively Chinese participants.…”

“…The present finding is also in line with those previous studies that observed a larger N170 FIE for own-race faces (Vizioli et al, 2010a; Caharel et al, 2011), but not with others that did not (Wiese et al, 2009; Chen et al, 2013). While the reason for this discrepancy remains somewhat unclear, it may be related to the fact that Chen et al (2013) tested exclusively Chinese participants. Recent evidence suggests that Asian participants show a similar degree of holistic processing for own- and other-race faces (Crookes et al, 2013), possibly reflecting a larger degree of variability tolerated by the face processing system of this participant group.…”

“…(ii) A larger N170 FIE for own-race faces has been observed in tasks which either emphasized the processing of detailed facial information (Caharel et al, 2011; Montalan et al, 2013) or not (Vizioli et al, 2010a). Moreover, two further studies with superficial tasks did not find a larger FIE for own-race faces (Wiese et al, 2009; Chen et al, 2013). I thus expected to find an increased N170 FIE for own-race faces in the ethnicity task, whereas it was less clear whether a corresponding effect would emerge in the more superficial orientation task or not.…”

“…At first sight, the results of these studies are rather discrepant, with roughly half of them reporting no significant difference in N170 for own- vs. other-race faces (James et al, 2001; Caldara et al, 2003, 2004; Wiese et al, 2009; Vizioli et al, 2010a,b; Herzmann et al, 2011; Ofan et al, 2011, 2013; Chen et al, 2013), and the other half finding larger amplitudes for other- relative to own-race faces (Herrmann et al, 2007; Gajewski et al, 2008; Stahl et al, 2008, 2010; Walker et al, 2008; He et al, 2009; Balas and Nelson, 2010; Brebner et al, 2011; Caharel et al, 2011; Wiese, 2012; Montalan et al, 2013; Wiese et al, 2013). Importantly, it has been suggested that varying task demands may contribute to these discrepant findings (e.g., Ito and Bartholow, 2009; Caharel et al, 2011).…”

“…Accordingly, one might expect a larger N170 FIE for own- relative to other-race faces. However, results on this issue are also mixed, with some studies showing larger N170 inversion effects for own-race faces (Vizioli et al, 2010a; Caharel et al, 2011; Montalan et al, 2013), whereas others do not (Wiese et al, 2009; Chen et al, 2013). As can be seen in Table 1, the number of relevant studies is relatively small to date, but an enhanced N170 FIE for own-race faces has been shown repeatedly in categorization tasks, while the situation with more superficial tasks is less clear.…”