The Other‐Race Effect in Infancy: Evidence Using a Morphing Technique

Abstract

Human adults are more accurate at discriminating faces from their own race than faces from another race. This other-race e$ecr (ORE) has been characterized as a reflection of face processing specialization arising from differential experience with own-race faces. We examined whether 3.5-month-old infants exhibit ORE using morphed faces on which adults had displayed a crossover ORE (i.e., Caucasians performed better on Caucasian faces and Asians performed better on Asian faces). In this experiment, Caucasian infants who had grown up in a predominantly Caucasian environment discriminated 100% Caucasian faces from 70% Caucasian/30% Asian morphed faces but failed to discriminate between the corresponding 100% Asian and 70% Asian/30% Caucasian faces. Thus, 3.5-month-olds exhibited evidence of ORE. These results indicate that at least by 3.5 months of age, infants have attained enough face processing expertise to process familiar-race faces in a different manner than unfamiliar-race faces.Humans rely heavily on face processing to interact effectively with other humans in their environment. This reliance is reflected in the high level of face processing expertise that human adults generally exhibit. For instance, adults can readily discriminate among and remember hundreds of faces for long durations (e.g., Bahrick, Bahrick, & Wittlinger, 1975). One of the significant issues in psychology is the question of how this expertise develops (Carey, 1992).

Development of the other-race effect during infancy: Evidence toward universality?

“…Previous reports have shown that the ORE develops early in life in Caucasian infants (Hayden et al, 2007; Kelly et al, 2007b; Sangrigoli & de Schonen, 2004b). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether the developmental pattern reported by Kelly and colleagues (2007b) extends to an additional ethnic group, namely, Han Chinese.…”

“…Sangrigoli and de Schonen (2004b; see also Hayden, Bhatt, Joseph, & Tanaka, 2007) demonstrated that an ORE for “Asiatic” faces is present at 3 months of age in French Caucasian infants, but it is also easily removed with minimal exposure to Asiatic faces, suggesting that a robust ORE does not emerge until later in life. To investigate this issue more fully, Kelly and colleagues (2007b) adopted a similar but slightly modified paradigm as Sangrigoli and de Schonen (2004b) (see Kelly et al, 2007b, for a detailed description of the methodological differences) in which they extended the range of face stimuli to four distinct ethnic groups (African, Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Caucasian) and tested three different age groups of British Caucasian infants (3-, 6-, and 9-month-olds).…”

The Origins of Social Categorization

“…Further, infants are better at recognizing individual novel faces own-race compared to other-race faces, and show the ability to form perceptual categories based on race [113–114]. As with visual preferences, these benefits are likely based on expertise for processing familiar faces: exposing infants to other-race faces in the laboratory can eliminate own-race facial recognition advantages [115–116].…”

Race-based perceptual asymmetries underlying face processing in infancy

“…The same face pairs were used in the experimental and control conditions. Using Adobe Photoshop, the hair was removed from the head (this is a common practice in studies investigating the ORE [e.g., Hayden et al, 2007;Walker & Tanaka, 2003]). In addition, in order to avoid pop-out based on low-level features, we equated for skin tone within the pairs of faces.…”