知觉经验对面孔整体加工的影响

基于经验的整体加工理论认为, 随着知觉经验的增多, 人们加工面孔的专家化能力逐渐增强。其中一种表现形式为, 在知觉面孔时更倾向于整体加工。该理论已经得到了一些实验证据的支持, 但未能解释另外一些研究的发现, 即对他族人群没有长期知觉经验的被试在加工他族面孔时也有强烈的整体加工。本研究旨在考察知觉经验对面孔整体加工的影响, 包括两个实验。实验1a通过组合面孔范式测量了中国被试在辨别本族面孔、他族面孔和种族融合面孔时的组合面孔效应(即面孔整体加工强度)。结果发现, 被试在知觉种族融合面孔时没有表现出组合面孔效应, 在知觉本族面孔和他族面孔时都表现出强烈的组合面孔效应。实验1b以灰阶图重复了实验1a。结果发现, 被试在知觉种族融合面孔时仍然没有表现出组合面孔效应, 在知觉本族面孔和他族面孔时表现出强烈的组合面孔效应。实验2通过操纵种族融合面孔的有或无, 测量5 s的知觉经验对融合面孔的组合效应的影响。结果发现, 在经过短时的知觉经验后, 被试在知觉融合面孔时也表现出强烈的组合面孔效应。上述实验结果表明, 中国被试在加工本族面孔、他族面孔和种族融合面孔时所诱发组合面孔效应有显著的、量的差别, 且这种整体加工的差异不会受到面孔肤色信息的影响。在经过短时的知觉经验后, 中国被试在加工种族融合面孔时表现出强烈的整体加工。该研究的发现提示, 不论是短时知觉经验还是长期知觉经验, 知觉经验的增加是面孔整体加工的一个关键要素。     

Perceptual experience shapes our ability to categorize faces by national origin: A new other-race effect

People are better at recognizing own-race than other-race faces. This other-race effect has been argued to be the result of perceptual expertise, whereby face-specific perceptual mechanisms are tuned through experience. We designed new tasks to determine whether other-race effects extend to categorizing faces by national origin. We began by selecting sets of face stimuli for these tasks that are typical in appearance for each of six nations (three Caucasian, three Asian) according to people from those nations (Study 1). Caucasian and Asian participants then categorized these faces by national origin (Study 2). Own-race faces were categorized more accurately than other-race faces. In contrast, Asian American participants, with more extensive other-race experience than the first Asian group, categorized other-race faces better than own-race faces, demonstrating a reversal of the other-race effect. Therefore, other-race effects extend to the ability to categorize faces by national origin, but only if participants have greater perceptual experience with own-race, than other-race faces. Study 3 ruled out non-perceptual accounts by showing that Caucasian and Asian faces were sorted more accurately by own-race than other-race participants, even in a sorting task without any explicit labelling required. Together, our results demonstrate a new other-race effect in sensitivity to national origin of faces that is linked to perceptual expertise.     

An encoding advantage for own-race versus other-race faces

Studies have shown that individuals are better able to recognise the faces of people from their own race than the faces of people from other races. Although the so-called own-race effect has been generally regarded as an advantage in recognition memory, differences in the processing of the own-race versus other-race faces might also be found at the earlier stages of perceptual encoding. In this study, the perceptual basis of the own-race effect was investigated by generating a continuum of images by morphing an East Asian parent face with a Caucasian parent face. In a same/different discrimination task, East Asian and Caucasian participants judged whether the morph faces were physically identical to, or different from, their parent faces. The results revealed a significant race-of-participant by race-of-face interaction such that East Asian participants were better able to discriminate East Asian faces, whereas Caucasian participants were better able to discriminate Caucasian faces. These results indicate that an own-race advantage occurs at the encoding stage of face processing.     

知觉适应对种族融合面孔的种族分类和知觉辨别的影响

面孔加工的种族效应(the other-race effects)指人们对面孔做个体辨别任务时辨别本族面孔的绩效优于辨别他族面孔的绩效, 而做种族分类任务时分类他族面孔的绩效优于分类本族面孔的绩效。本研究通过知觉适应操纵被试对种族两歧(高加索和亚洲)融合面孔的种族知觉, 进而比较被试在两种条件下对同一张融合面孔进行种族分类和知觉辨别的绩效的差异。结果发现, 知觉适应能使被试产生将两歧融合面孔知觉为与原始面孔所属种族相反种族的知觉偏向, 并且, 伴随着这种知觉偏向, 两歧融合面孔的加工出现了他族分类优势和本族辨别优势, 提示社会认知因素对面孔加工的种族效应有重要作用。     

The other-race effect: Holistic coding differences and beyond

We evaluate claims that the other-race effect in face memory reflects stronger holistic coding of own-race than other-race faces. Considering evidence from a range of paradigms, including the inversion effect, part–whole effect, composite effect, and the scrambled/blurred task, we find considerable inconsistency, both between paradigms and between participant ethnicities. At the same time, however, studies that isolate configural and component feature processing consistently show better featural, as well as better configural, processing of own-race faces, for both Caucasian and Asian participants. These results raise the possibility that the key feature of own-race face processing is not stronger holistic processing per se, but rather more effective processing of all types of face information (featural as well as holistic).     

A holistic account of the own-race effect in face recognition: evidence from a cross-cultural study

A robust finding in the cross-cultural research is that people's memories for faces of their own race are superior to their memories for other-race faces. However, the mechanisms underlying the own-race effect have not been well defined. In this study, a holistic explanation was examined in which Caucasian and Asian participants were asked to recognize features of Caucasian and Asian faces presented in isolation and in the whole face. The main finding was that Caucasian participants recognized own-race faces more holistically than Asian faces whereas Asian participants demonstrated holistic recognition for both own-race and other-race faces. The differences in holistic recognition between Caucasian and Asian participants mirrored differences in their relative experience with own-race and other-race faces. These results suggest that the own-race effect may arise from the holistic recognition of faces from a highly familiar racial group.     

The development of preferences for own-race versus other-race faces in 3-, 6- and 9-month-old Caucasian infants

Visual preferences for pairs of African and Caucasian faces were repeatedly assessed in 3-, 6- and 9-month-old Caucasian infants with a preferential looking paradigm. Two different patterns of preference development were found: First, the spontaneous own-race preference at three months reported in the literature tilts to a preference for other-race faces at nine months passing through a null-preference at six months. This replicates the pattern recently reported for Asian infants [Liu et al. (2015). Development of visual preference for own- versus other-race faces in infancy. Developmental Psychology. doi:10.1037/a0038835]. Second, at all three ages fixation time towards Caucasian faces significantly reduces across the consecutive trial presentation. This is a similar effect as in novelty preference studies to occur after a sufficiently long familiarization phase. Both patterns can be explained in terms of an advantaged own-race face processing with the emerging Other-Race-Effect.     

Neural evidence for the contribution of holistic processing but not attention allocation to the other-race effect on face memory

Multiple mechanisms have been suggested to contribute to the other-race effect on face memory, the phenomenon of better memory performance for own-race than other-race faces. Here, two of these mechanisms, increased attention allocation and greater holistic processing during memory encoding for own-race than other-race faces, were tested in two separate experiments. In these experiments event-related potentials were measured during study (the difference due to memory, Dm) and test phase (old/new effects) to examine brain activation related to memory encoding and retrieval, allowing for selective investigations of these memory sub-processes. In Experiment 1, participants studied own-race (Caucasian) and other-race (Chinese) faces under focused or divided attention. In Experiment 2, participants studied own-race (Caucasian) and other-race (African American) faces presented upright or upside down (i.e., inverted). Both experiments showed decreases in memory performance when attention allocation or holistic processing was reduced, but these effects were similar for own-race and other-race faces. Manipulations of holistic processing, but not attention allocation, influenced the neural other-race effects during memory encoding. Inverted own-race faces showed similar neural patterns as upright other-race faces, indicating that when holistic processing of own-race faces was reduced, these faces were encoded similarly as upright other-race faces. No influences of the experimental manipulations on other-race effects during memory retrieval were found. The present study provides the first neural evidence that increased holistic processing during memory encoding contributes to the other-race effect on face memory.     

Intentionally remembering or forgetting own- and other-race faces: Evidence from directed forgetting

People are better at remembering faces of their own relative to another ethnic group. This so-called own-race bias (ORB) has been explained in terms of differential perceptual expertise for own- and other-race faces or, alternatively, as resulting from socio-cognitive factors. To test predictions derived from the latter account, we examined item-method directed forgetting (DF), a paradigm sensitive to an intentional modulation of memory, for faces belonging to different ethnic and social groups. In a series of five experiments, participants during learning received cues following each face to either remember or forget the item, but at test were required to recognize all items irrespective of instruction. In Experiments 1 and 5, Caucasian participants showed DF for own-race faces only while, in Experiment 2, East Asian participants with considerable expertise for Caucasian faces demonstrated DF for own- and other-race faces. Experiments 3 and 4 found clear DF for social in- and outgroup faces. These results suggest that a modulation of face memory by motivational processes is limited to faces with which we have acquired perceptual expertise. Thus, motivation alone is not sufficient to modulate memory for other-race faces and cannot fully explain the ORB.     

Processes underlying the cross-race effect: an investigation of holistic, featural, and relational processing of own-race versus other-race faces

Adults are often better at recognising own-race than other-race faces. Unlike previous studies that reported an own-race advantage after administering a single test of either holistic processing or of featural and relational processing, we used a cross-over design and multiple tasks to assess differential processing of faces from a familiar race versus a less familiar race. Caucasian and Chinese adults performed four tasks, each with Caucasian and Chinese faces. Two tasks measured holistic processing: the composite face task and the part/whole task. Both tasks indicated holistic processing of own-race and other-race faces that did not differ in degree. Two tasks measured featural and relational processing: the Jane/Ling task, in which same/ different judgments were made about face pairs that differed in features of their spacing, and the scrambled/blurred task, in which test faces were scrambled (isolates memory for components) or blurred (isolates memory for relations). Both tasks provided evidence of an own-race advantage in both featural and relational processing. We conclude that even when adults process other-race faces holistically, other manifestations of an own-race advantage remain.     

Attractiveness of own-race, other-race, and mixed-race faces

Averaged face composites, which represent the central tendency of a familiar population of faces, are attractive. If this prototypicality contributes to their appeal, then averaged composites should be more attractive when their component faces come from a familiar, own-race population than when they come from a less familiar, other-race population. We compared the attractiveness of own-race composites, other-race composites, and mixed-race composites (where the component faces were from both races). In experiment 1, Caucasian participants rated own-race composites as more attractive than other-race composites, but only for male faces. However, mixed-race (Caucasian/Japanese) composites were significantly more attractive than own-race composites, particularly for the opposite sex. In experiment 2, Caucasian and Japanese participants living in Australia and Japan, respectively, selected the most attractive face from a continuum with exaggerated Caucasian characteristics at one end and exaggerated Japanese characteristics at the other, with intervening images including a Caucasian averaged composite, a mixed-race averaged composite, and a Japanese averaged composite. The most attractive face was, again, a mixed-race composite, for both Caucasian and Japanese participants. In experiment 3, Caucasian participants rated individual Eurasian faces as significantly more attractive than either Caucasian or Asian faces. Similar results were obtained with composites. Eurasian faces and composites were also rated as healthier than Caucasian or Asian faces and composites, respectively. These results suggest that signs of health may be more important than prototypicality in making average faces attractive.     

Effects of divided attention and social categorization on the own-race bias in face recognition

Perceivers remember own-race faces more accurately than other-race faces (i.e., Own-Race Bias). In the current experiments, we manipulated participants' attentional resources and social group membership to explore their influence on own and other-race face recognition memory. In Experiment 1, Chinese participants viewed own-race and Caucasian faces, and between-subjects we manipulated whether participants attention was divided during face encoding. We found that divided attention eliminated the Own-Race Bias in memory due to a reduction of memory accuracy for own-race faces, implicating that attention allocation plays a role in creating the bias. In Experiment 2, Chinese participants completed an ostensible personality test. Some participants were informed that their personality traits were most commonly found in Caucasian (i.e., other-race) individuals, resulting in these participants sharing a group membership with other-race targets. In contrast, other participants were not told anything about the personality test, resulting in the default own-race group membership. The participants encoded the faces for a subsequent recognition memory test either with or without performing a concurrent arithmetic distracting task. Results showed that other-race group membership and reducing attention during encoding independently eliminated the typical Own-Race Bias in face memory. The implications of these findings on perceptual-expertise and social-categorization models are discussed.     

The contribution of shape and surface information in the other-race face effect

Faces from another race are generally more difficult to recognize than faces from one's own race. However, faces provide multiple cues for recognition and it remains unknown what are the relative contribution of these cues to this “other-race effect”. In the current study, we used three-dimensional laser-scanned head models which allowed us to independently manipulate two prominent cues for face recognition: the facial shape morphology and the facial surface properties (texture and colour). In Experiment 1, Asian and Caucasian participants implicitly learned a set of Asian and Caucasian faces that had both shape and surface cues to facial identity. Their recognition of these encoded faces was then tested in an old/new recognition task. For these face stimuli, we found a robust other-race effect: Both groups were more accurate at recognizing own-race than other-race faces. Having established the other-race effect, in Experiment 2 we provided only shape cues for recognition and in Experiment 3 we provided only surface cues for recognition. Caucasian participants continued to show the other-race effect when only shape information was available, whereas Asian participants showed no effect. When only surface information was available, there was a weak pattern for the other-race effect in Asians. Performance was poor in this latter experiment, so this pattern needs to be interpreted with caution. Overall, these findings suggest that Asian and Caucasian participants rely differently on shape and surface cues to recognize own-race faces, and that they continue to use the same cues for other-race faces, which may be suboptimal for these faces.     

The role of experience during childhood in shaping the other-race effect

It is well known that adults' face recognition is characterized by an 'other-race effect' (ORE; see Meissner & Brigham, 2001 ), but few studies have investigated this ORE during the development of the face processing system. Here we examined the role of experience with other-race faces during childhood by testing a group of 6- to 14-year-old Asian children adopted between 2 and 26 months in Caucasian families living in Western Europe, as well as a group of age-matched Caucasian children. The latter group showed a strong ORE in favour of own-race faces that was stable from 6 to 14 years of age. The adopted participants did not show a significant reversal of the ORE, unlike a recently reported study ( Sangrigoli et al., 2005 ), but rather comparable results with Asian and Caucasian faces. Their pattern of performance was neither influenced by their age of adoption, nor by the amount of experience they accumulated during childhood with other-race faces. These results indicate that the balance of performance with Asian and Caucasian faces can be modulated, but not completely reversed, in children whose exposure to own- and other-race faces changes drastically during the period of maturation of the face recognition system, depending on the length of exposure to the new face race. Overall, experience appears to be crucial during childhood to shape the face recognition system towards the most predominant morphologies of faces present in the environment.     

Systems Factorial Technology provides new insights on the other-race effect

The other-race effect refers to the difficulty of discriminating between faces from ethnic and racial groups other than one’s own. This effect may be caused by a slow, feature-by-feature, analytic process, whereas the discrimination of own-race faces occurs faster and more holistically. However, this distinction has received inconsistent support. To provide a critical test, we employed Systems Factorial Technology (Townsend & Nozawa in Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 39, 321–359, 1995), which is a powerful tool for analyzing the organization of mental networks underlying perceptual processes. We compared Taiwanese participants’ face discriminations of both own-race (Taiwanese woman) and other-race (Caucasian woman) faces according to the faces’ nose-to-mouth separation and eye-to-eye separation. We found evidence for weak holistic processing (parallel processing) coupled with the strong analytic property of a self-terminating stopping rule for own-race faces, in contrast to strong analytic processing (serial self-terminating processing) for other-race faces, supporting the holistic/analytic hypothesis.     

Expert face coding: Configural and component coding of own-race and other-race faces

Configural and holistic coding are hallmarks of face perception. Although recent studies have shown that own-race faces are coded more holistically than other-race faces, the evidence for better configural coding of own-race faces is equivocal. We directly measured configural and component coding of own- and other-race male faces in Caucasian and Chinese participants. We manipulated individual features (components) or their spatial relations (configurations) using a novel morphing method to vary difficulty parametrically and tested sensitivity to these changes in a sequential matching task. Both configural and component coding were better for upright own-race than for upright other-race faces. Inversion impaired detection of configural changes more than it did detection of component changes, but also impaired performance more for easier discriminations,independent of type of change. These results challenge explanations of face expertise that rely solely on configural and holistic processing, and also call into question the widespread interpretation of large inversion decrements as diagnostic of configural coding.     

Encoding differences affect the number and precision of own-race versus other-race faces stored in visual working memory

Other-race faces are discriminated and recognized less accurately than own-race faces. Despite a wealth of research characterizing this other-race effect (ORE), little is known about the nature of the representations of own-race versus other-race faces. This is because traditional measures of this ORE provide a binary measure of discrimination or recognition (correct/incorrect), failing to capture potential variation in the quality of face representations. We applied a novel continuous-response paradigm to independently measure the number of own-race and other-race face representations stored in visual working memory (VWM) and the precision with which they are stored. Participants reported target own-race or other-race faces on a circular face space that smoothly varied along the dimension of identity. Using probabilistic mixture modeling, we found that following ample encoding time, the ORE is attributable to differences in the probability of a face being maintained in VWM. Reducing encoding time, a manipulation that is more sensitive to encoding limitations, caused a loss of precision or an increase in variability of VWM for other-race but not own-race faces. These results suggest that the ORE is driven by the inefficiency with which other-race faces are rapidly encoded in VWM and provide novel insights about how perceptual experience influences the representation of own-race and other-race faces in VWM.

     

Nature and nurture in own-race face processing

A standard visual preference task was used to examine 3-month-olds' looking times at own-race versus other-race faces as a function of environmental exposure to faces from the two categories. Participants were Caucasian infants living in a Caucasian environment, African infants living in an African environment, and African infants living in a predominantly Caucasian environment. The results indicate that preference for own-race faces is present as early as 3 months of age, but that this preference results from exposure to the prototypical facial environment.     

Fixations and Fixation Shifts in Own-Race and Other-Race Face Pairs at Three,Six and Nine Months

Caucasian infants were presented 15 pairs of Caucasian own-race faces and 15 pairs of African other-race faces. The infants were assessed longitudinally at ages three, six and nine months. Two measures were obtained from the infants’ eye-movements: (1) the length of fixations on either stimulus of a pair presented for 5.5 s (fixation duration) and (2) the amount of fixation shifts between the two stimuli (shift frequency). The study analyzes the changes in both measures with age and across the within-race face pair presentations. Despite general age-related improvements reflected in shorter fixation durations and a higher shift frequency, the results reveal differences between African face pairs and Caucasian face pairs at six and nine months. During the first trials (spontaneous looking behavior) the infants shift more often between the Caucasian own-race faces than between the African other-race faces. The fixation durations, however, which are typically of focus in Visual Pair Preference Tasks, do not differ significantly between the face races. The results are interpreted in terms of processing differences for own-race faces and the emerging Other-Race-Effect by six months of age. Furthermore, the usability of fixation duration as the only measure in the pair comparison setting is discussed.     

Identification of own-race and other-race faces: Implications for the representation of race in face space

Own-race faces are recognized more easily than faces of a different, unfamiliar race. According to the multidimensional space (MDS) framework, the poor discriminability of other-race faces is due to their being more densely clustered in face space than own-race faces. Multidimensional scaling analyses of similarity ratings (Caucasian participants, n = 22) showed that other-race (Chinese) faces are more densely clustered in face space. We applied a formal model to test whether the spatial location of face stimuli could account for identification accuracy of another group of Caucasian participants (n = 30). As expected, own-race (Caucasian) faces were identified more accurately (higher hit rate, lower false alarms, and higher A) than other-race faces, which were more densely clustered than ownrace faces. A quantitative model successfully predicted identification performance from the spatial locations of the stimuli. The results are discussed in relation to the standard MDS account of race effects and also an alternative “race-feature” hypothesis.