Social categorization and individuation in the own‐age bias

Young adults recognize other young adult faces more accurately than older adult faces, an effect termed the own‐age bias (OAB). The categorization‐individuation model (CIM) proposes that recognition memory biases like the OAB occur as unfamiliar faces are initially quickly categorized. In‐group faces are seen as socially relevant which motivates the processing of individuating facial features. Outgroup faces are processed more superficially with attention to category‐specific information which hinders subsequent recognition. To examine the roles of categorization and individuation in the context of the OAB, participants completed a face recognition task and a speeded age categorization task including young and older adult faces. In the recognition task, half of the participants were given instructions aimed to encourage individuation of other‐age faces. An OAB emerged that was not influenced by individuation instructions, but the magnitude of the OAB was correlated with performance in the categorization task. The larger the categorization advantage for older adult over young adult faces, the larger the OAB. These results support the premise that social categorization processes can affect the subsequent recognition of own‐ and other‐age faces, but do not provide evidence for the effectiveness of individuation instructions in reducing the OAB.     

The own‐age face recognition bias is task dependent

The own‐age bias (OAB) in face recognition (more accurate recognition of own‐age than other‐age faces) is robust among young adults but not older adults. We investigated the OAB under two different task conditions. In Experiment 1 young and older adults (who reported more recent experience with own than other‐age faces) completed a match‐to‐sample task with young and older adult faces; only young adults showed an OAB. In Experiment 2 young and older adults completed an identity detection task in which we manipulated the identity strength of target and distracter identities by morphing each face with an average face in 20% steps. Accuracy increased with identity strength and facial age influenced older adults' (but not younger adults') strategy, but there was no evidence of an OAB. Collectively, these results suggest that the OAB depends on task demands and may be absent when searching for one identity.     

A developmental investigation of other‐race contact and the own‐race face effect

Research over the past two decades has demonstrated that individuals are better at recognizing and discriminating faces of their own race versus other races. The own‐race effect has typically been investigated in relation to recognition memory; however, some evidence supports an own‐race effect at the level of perceptual encoding in adults. The current study investigated the developmental basis of the own‐race effect in White primary students (aged 7–11), secondary students (aged 12–15) and university students. Face stimuli were generated by morphing South Asian and White parent faces together along a linear continuum. In a same/different perceptual discrimination task, participants judged whether the face stimuli (morphs and parent faces) were physically identical to or different from the original parent faces. Results revealed a significant race of face effect for each age group, whereby participants were better at discriminating White relative to Asian faces. A significantly larger own‐race effect was observed for the secondary and university students than for primary students. A questionnaire was used to assess other‐race social anxiety and contact; however, this self‐report measure was not found to be related to the observed own‐race effect.     

Task‐irrelevant own‐race faces capture attention: Eye‐tracking evidence

To investigate attentional capture by face’s race, the current study recorded saccade latencies of eye movement measurements in an inhibition of return (IOR) task. Compared to Caucasian (other‐race) faces, Chinese (own‐race) faces elicited longer saccade latency. This phenomenon disappeared when faces were inverted. The results indicated that own‐race faces capture attention automatically with high‐level configural processing.     

A perceptual discrimination investigation of the own‐race effect and intergroup experience

Research over the past two decades has demonstrated that individuals are better at the recognition and discrimination of own‐ versus other‐race faces. Recent evidence, however, supports an own‐race effect at the level of perceptual encoding in adults. The current study examines the perceptual basis of the own‐race effect in secondary students from two racially segregated communities (White and South Asian). The contact hypothesis is investigated, as other‐race experience may influence other‐race face perception. Face stimuli were generated by morphing together South Asian and White faces along a linear continuum. In a same/different perceptual discrimination task participants judged whether face stimuli were physically identical to, or different from, the original faces. Results revealed a significant own‐race effect for the White participants only, wherein they were better at discriminating White relative to South Asian faces. Other‐race individuating experience was found to predict the own‐race effect, indicating that other‐race experience influences other‐race face perceptual expertise. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The influence of social factors and implicit racial bias on a generalized own‐race effect

The current study sought to determine whether the experimentally reported ‘own‐race effect’ is other‐race specific, or whether it is a generalized effect. The perceptual processing of own‐ versus two groups of other‐race faces was therefore explored in White and South Asian individuals. Participants completed a computer‐based discrimination task of White, South Asian and Black face‐morphs. Results showed a generalized own‐race effect for White and South Asian participants discriminating own‐ versus other‐race (White/South Asian and Black) faces, such that individuals demonstrated a perceptual discrimination advantage for own‐ versus other‐race faces in general. These findings were linked to implicit racial bias and other‐race individuating experience, demonstrating that social variables play an important role in the magnitude of the own‐race effect. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The neural correlates of processing newborn and adult faces in 3‐year‐old children

The current study examines the processing of upright and inverted faces in 3‐year‐old children (n = 35). Event‐related potentials (ERPs) were recorded during a passive looking paradigm including adult and newborn face stimuli. We observed three face‐sensitive components, the P1, the N170 and the P400. Inverted faces elicited shorter P1 latency and larger P400 amplitude. P1 and N170 amplitudes were larger for adult faces. To examine the role of experience in the development of face processing, the processing of adult and newborn faces was compared for children with a younger sibling (n = 23) and children without a younger sibling (n = 12). Age of sibling at test correlated negatively with P1 amplitude for adult and newborn faces. This may indicate more efficient processing of different face ages in children with a younger sibling and potentially reflects a more flexible face representation.     

Biracial and monoracial infant own‐race face perception: an eye tracking study

We know that early experience plays a crucial role in the development of face processing, but we know little about how infants learn to distinguish faces from different races, especially for non‐Caucasian populations. Moreover, it is unknown whether differential processing of different race faces observed in typically studied monoracial infants extends to biracial infants as well. Thus, we investigated 3‐month‐old Caucasian, Asian and biracial (Caucasian‐Asian) infants’ ability to distinguish Caucasian and Asian faces. Infants completed two within‐subject, infant‐controlled habituation sequences and test trials as an eye tracker recorded looking times and scanning patterns. Examination of individual differences revealed significant positive correlations between own‐race novelty preference and scanning frequency between eye and mouth regions of own‐race habituation stimuli for Caucasian and Asian infants, suggesting that facility in own‐race face discrimination stems from active inspection of internal facial features in these groups. Biracial infants, however, showed the opposite effect: An ‘own‐race’ novelty preference was associated with reduced scanning between eye and mouth regions of ‘own‐race’ habituation stimuli, suggesting that biracial infants use a distinct approach to processing frequently encountered faces. Future directions for investigating face processing development in biracial populations are discussed. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at http://youtu.be/a_dDXfFuEfY     

Holistic processing for faces and cars in preschool‐aged children and adults: evidence from the composite effect

The current study compared the development of holistic processing for faces and non‐face visual objects by testing for the composite effect for faces and frontal images of cars in 3‐ to 5‐year‐old children and adults in a series of four experiments using a two‐alternative forced‐choice recognition task. Results showed that a composite effect for faces was present as early as years, and none of the age groups tested showed signs of a composite effect for cars. These findings provide the first demonstration that holistic processing is already selective for faces in early childhood, and confirm existing evidence that sensitivity to holistic information in faces does not increase from 4 years to adulthood.     

Contribution of the priming paradigm to the understanding of the conceptual developmental shift from 5 to 9 years of age

We conducted three experiments to study the role of instrumental (e.g. knife–bread) and categorical (e.g. cake–bread) relations in the development of conceptual organization with a priming paradigm, by varying the nature of the task (naming – Experiment 1 – or categorical decision – Experiments 2 and 3). The participants were 5‐, 7‐ and 9‐year‐old children and adults. The results showed that on both types of task, adults and 9‐year‐old children presented instrumental and categorical priming effects, whereas 5‐year‐old children presented mainly instrumental priming effects, with categorical effects remaining marginal. Moreover, the magnitude of the instrumental priming effects decreased with age. Finally, the priming effects observed for 7‐year‐old children depended on the task, especially for the categorical effects. The theoretical implications of these results for our understanding of conceptual reorganization from 5 to 9 years of age are discussed.     

Developmental changes in the recognition of faces and facial features

The view that, as children get older, there is a decline in the use of feature‐based forms of face processing to more configurational forms of processing was examined by asking 6‐year‐old and 9‐year‐old children to judge which of two photographs matches an identical probe photograph. The probe and test stimuli were either photographs of whole faces or photographs of isolated facial features. Within this standard method, the stimuli also systematically varied in terms of the familiarity of the faces shown and in the orientation of presentation, both factors that have been interpreted as effecting configurational encoding. A number of age‐related effects are observed: (a) older children are better at recognizing whole faces than younger children, (b) older children exhibit a clear face inversion effect with whole faces while the younger children are equally adept at identifying upright and inverted whole faces, and (c) analysis of the recognition rates associated with the individual features reveals that younger children are better than older children when asked to recognize eye regions. It is argued that the data support the view that as children get older there is a change in the forms of piecemeal encoding employed and an increase in configurational processing. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Memory for own‐ and other‐race faces: a dual‐process approach

The current studies assessed the phenomenological basis of the cross‐race effect by examining predictions of various social‐cognitive mechanisms within a dual‐process framework for both the perception (Experiment 1) and recognition (Experiment 2) of own‐ and other‐race faces. Taken together, the current studies demonstrated that differential performance on own‐race faces was largely due to qualitative differences in the encoding of facial information represented by a recollection process. Furthermore, false recollections with high ratings of confidence occurred more often when participants encoded and responded to unfamiliar other‐race faces. The theoretical implications of these findings for the phenomenology of skilled perceptual‐memory are discussed, and the applied consequences of the cross‐race effect as an encoding‐based phenomenon are considered. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inter‐racial contact and the own‐race bias for face recognition in South Africa and England

Own‐race bias, where people are more accurate recognizing faces of people from their own race than other races, can lead to misidentification and, in some cases, innocent people being convicted. This bias was explored in South Africa and England, using Black and White participants. People were shown several photographs of Black and White faces and were later asked if they had seen these faces (and several fillers). In addition, participants were given a questionnaire about inter‐racial contact. Cross‐race identification accuracy for Black participants was positively correlated with self‐reported inter‐racial contact. The confidence–accuracy relationship was strongest when making own‐race judgements. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Older but not younger infants associate own‐race faces with happy music and other‐race faces with sad music

We used a novel intermodal association task to examine whether infants associate own‐ and other‐race faces with music of different emotional valences. Three‐ to 9‐month‐olds saw a series of neutral own‐ or other‐race faces paired with happy or sad musical excerpts. Three‐ to 6‐month‐olds did not show any specific association between face race and music. At 9 months, however, infants looked longer at own‐race faces paired with happy music than at own‐race faces paired with sad music. Nine‐month‐olds also looked longer at other‐race faces paired with sad music than at other‐race faces paired with happy music. These results indicate that infants with nearly exclusive own‐race face experience develop associations between face race and music emotional valence in the first year of life. The potential implications of such associations for developing racial biases in early childhood are discussed.     

知觉场理论对面孔知觉年龄偏差效应的解释

使用融合面孔范式和倒置面孔范式来研究面孔知觉的年龄偏差效应,检验知觉场能否作为面孔整体加工的指标,并以此发展年龄偏差的整体加工解释。结果发现：（1）成人和儿童在加工正立面孔时的知觉场均大于加工倒置面孔时的知觉场;（2）在加工正立面孔时,成人加工本年龄面孔比加工他年龄面孔的知觉场更大。上述结果表明：（1）知觉场大小可以作为面孔整体加工的指标,且受面孔朝向的影响;（2）知觉场假设可以解释面孔的年龄偏差效应。     

知觉场理论对面孔知觉年龄偏差效应的解释

使用融合面孔范式和倒置面孔范式来研究面孔知觉的年龄偏差效应,检验知觉场能否作为面孔整体加工的指标,并以此发展年龄偏差的整体加工解释。结果发现：（1）成人和儿童在加工正立面孔时的知觉场均大于加工倒置面孔时的知觉场;（2）在加工正立面孔时,成人加工本年龄面孔比加工他年龄面孔的知觉场更大。上述结果表明：（1）知觉场大小可以作为面孔整体加工的指标,且受面孔朝向的影响;（2）知觉场假设可以解释面孔的年龄偏差效应。     

Does culture shape face perception in autism? Cross‐cultural evidence of the own‐race advantage from the UK and Japan

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are associated with face perception atypicalities, and atypical experience with faces has been proposed as an underlying explanation. Studying the own‐race advantage (ORA) for face recognition can reveal the effect of experience on face perception in ASD, although the small number of studies in the area present mixed findings. This study probed the ORA in ASD by comparing two cultural groups simultaneously for the first time. Children with ASD in the UK (N = 16) and Japan (N = 26) were compared with age‐ and ability‐matched typically developing (TD) children in the UK (N = 16) and Japan (N = 26). Participants completed a two‐alternative forced‐choice task, whereby they had to recognize a just seen face from a foil which was manipulated in one of four ways (IC: identity change; EE: easy eyes; HE: hard eyes; HM: hard mouth). Face stimuli were Asian and Caucasian, and thus the same stimuli were own and other race depending on the cultural group. The ASD groups in the UK and Japan did not show impaired face recognition abilities, or impairments with recognizing faces depending on manipulations to the eye region, and importantly they showed an ORA. There was considerable heterogeneity in the presence of the ORA in ASD and TD and also across cultures. Children in Japan had higher accuracy than children in the UK, and TD children in Japan did not show an ORA. This cross‐cultural study challenges the view that atypical experiences with faces lead to a reduced/absent ORA in ASD.     

Perceptual narrowing towards adult faces is a cross‐cultural phenomenon in infancy: a behavioral and near‐infrared spectroscopy study with Japanese infants

Recent data showed that, in Caucasian infants, perceptual narrowing occurs for own‐race adult faces between 3 and 9 months of age, possibly as a consequence of the extensive amount of social and perceptual experience accumulated with caregivers and/or other adult individuals of the same race of the caregiver. The neural correlates of this developmental process remain unexplored, and it is currently unknown whether perceptual tuning towards adult faces can be extended to other cultures. To this end, in the current study we tested the ability of 3‐ and 9‐month‐old Japanese infants to discriminate among adult and infant Asian faces in a visual familiarization task (Experiment 1), and compared 9‐month‐olds’ cerebral hemodynamic responses to adult and infant faces as measured by near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) (Experiment 2). Results showed that 3‐month‐olds exhibit above‐chance discrimination of adult and infant faces, whereas 9‐month‐olds discriminate adult faces but not infant faces (Experiment 1). Moreover, adult faces, but not infant faces, induced significant increases in hemodynamic responses in the right temporal areas of 9‐month‐old infants. Overall, our data suggest that perceptual narrowing towards adult faces is a cross‐cultural phenomenon occurring between 3 and 9 months of age, and translates by 9 months of age into a right‐hemispheric specialization in the processing of adult faces.     

Processing of facial and non‐facial visual stimuli in 2–5‐year‐old children

The present experiments examined the degree to which analytic and holistic modes of processing play a role in the way 2–5‐year‐old children process facial and non‐facial visual stimuli. Children between 2 and 5 years of age were instructed to categorize faces (in Experiment 1) and non‐facial visual stimuli, such as birds and planes (in Experiment 2), into two categories. The categories were so constructed as to allow the children to categorize the facial and non‐facial stimuli either analytically (by focusing on a single attribute) or holistically (in terms of overall similarity). The results demonstrated that the previous conclusions concerning older children's (from 6 years onwards) holistic mode of facial processing could not be generalized to younger children because most of the 2–5‐year olds processed the faces by taking single facial attributes into account. A similar pattern of results emerged for the processing of objects, showing that the majority of the children focused on single attributes. Thus, for both visual domains, holistic processing was the exception rather than the rule. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Five‐ to twelve‐year‐olds' control of movement velocity in a dynamic collision avoidance task

We investigated age‐related differences in a dynamic collision avoidance task that bears a resemblance to pedestrian road crossing. Five‐ to seven‐year‐old children, ten‐ to twelve‐year‐old children and adults were instructed to push a doll across a small‐scale road between two toy vehicles, which approached one after the other. We analysed the number of attempted crossings, the number of collisions, movement onset times and movement velocity control. The youngest children attempted to cross less often, but collided more frequently than the adults. This age effect could be attributed to differences in the way the children and adults controlled movement velocity. The youngest children attained the velocity that was required for safe travel too late, particularly when the gaps between the toy vehicles were small. The age differences in movement onset strategies were less clear‐cut. The findings are discussed within a framework that proposes distinct roles of vision in action planning and action production.