Own-Race Faces Capture Attention Faster than Other-Race Faces: Evidence from Response Time and the N2pc

Abstract

Studies have shown that people are better at recognizing human faces from their own-race than from other-races, an effect often termed the Own-Race Advantage. The current study investigates whether there is an Own-Race Advantage in attention and its neural correlates. Participants were asked to search for a human face among animal faces. Experiment 1 showed a classic Own-Race Advantage in response time both for Chinese and Black South African participants. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), Experiment 2 showed a similar Own-Race Advantage in response time for both upright faces and inverted faces. Moreover, the latency of N2pc for own-race faces was earlier than that for other-race faces. These results suggested that own-race faces capture attention more efficiently than other-race faces.

Preferential attention to same‐and other‐ethnicity infant faces does not fully overcome the other‐race effect

“…Nonetheless, studies that did include participants of several ethnicities in their experiments and used similar paradigms to ours found that regardless of the ethnicity of the participant, same-ethnicity faces captured faster attention than other-ethnicity faces (Zhou et al, 2015), and that same-ethnicity faces were recognized more successfully than other-ethnicity faces (Tanaka et al, 2004).…”

“…An attentional preference for same‐ethnicity faces has been reliably found using other selective attention paradigms such as in eye tracking (Kelly et al, ) and visual search tasks (Zhou et al, ). For example, Zhou et al () measured selective attention when determining the presence of same‐ and other‐ethnicity faces among exogenous distractors in a visual search task. Participants displayed a same‐ethnicity advantage such that same‐ethnicity faces captured attention more efficiently than other‐ethnicity faces, a bias that occurs relatively early in development (Kelly et al, ).…”

“…Specifically, response times to valid cue trials were greater for sameethnicity adult than other-ethnicity adult trials, a finding consistent with previous work showing that other-ethnicity faces attract less attention than same-ethnicity faces (Ito & Urland, 2003;Valentine & Endo, 1992). An attentional preference for same-ethnicity faces has been reliably found using other selective attention paradigms such as in eye tracking (Kelly et al, 2005) and visual search tasks (Zhou et al, 2015). For example, Zhou et al (2015) measured selective attention when determining the presence of same-and otherethnicity faces among exogenous distractors in a visual search task.…”

“…An attentional preference for same-ethnicity faces has been reliably found using other selective attention paradigms such as in eye tracking (Kelly et al, 2005) and visual search tasks (Zhou et al, 2015). For example, Zhou et al (2015) measured selective attention when determining the presence of same-and otherethnicity faces among exogenous distractors in a visual search task.…”

Does Target Object Processing Affect Reaction Times in Simple Detection Spatial Cueing Tasks?

“…In a recent study of the effect of same-race bias on face recognition, Zhou et al (2015) presented arrays containing human and non-human faces. Participants were asked simply to determine if a human face was present in an array of faces.…”