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.     

Does implementation of reforms authorized in Section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act affect the complexity of the questions asked of young alleged victims in court?

This study examined whether the implementation of Section 28 (S28) of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act and the introduction of mandatory ground rules hearings reduced the complexity of the questions English lawyers asked when examining child witnesses. This study compared cases with (n = 43) and without (n = 43) the S28 special measures and involved children aged 6–15 testifying as alleged victims of sexual abuse. Defense lawyers' questions in the S28 condition comprised fewer words, clauses, false starts, multiple negatives, and temporal and numeric attributes than in the non‐S28 condition. When questioning younger children, lawyers used fewer words, clauses, references to “before/after,” and passive voice. These results demonstrated that S28 successfully reduced the complexity of the questions and that lawyers in both conditions partially adjusted the complexity of their questions to accommodate children's developmental capabilities.     

Are your cross‐ethnic friends ethnic and/or national group identifiers? The role of own and perceived cross‐ethnic friend's identities on outgroup attitudes and multiculturalism

We investigated how own ethnic and national identities and perceived ethnic and national identities of close cross‐ethnic friends may predict outgroup attitudes and multiculturalism among Turkish (majority status, N = 197) and Kurdish (minority status, N = 80) ethnic group members in Turkey (M_age = 21.12, SD = 2.59, 69.7% females, 30.3% males). Compared with Turkish participants, Kurdish participants were more asymmetrical in rating their cross‐ethnic friend's identities relative to their own, reporting higher ethnic identity, but lower national identity for themselves. Own ethnic identity was negatively associated with attitudes and multiculturalism, whereas own national identity was positively associated with only attitudes. Perceived cross‐ethnic friend's national identity was positively related to both outgroup attitudes and multiculturalism. Shared national identification (high levels of own and friend's national identity) led to most positive outgroup attitudes and highest support for multiculturalism. Findings were discussed in the light of social identity and common ingroup identity models.