Adults scan own- and other-race faces differently.

Genyue Fu,Chao S Hu,Qiandong Wang,Paul C Quinn,Kang Lee

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0037688

Abstract

It is well established that individuals show an other-race effect (ORE) in face recognition: they recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. The present study tested the hypothesis that individuals would also scan own- and other-race faces differently. We asked Chinese participants to remember Chinese and Caucasian faces and we tested their memory of the faces over five testing blocks. The participants' eye movements were recorded with the use of an eye tracker. The data were analyzed with an Area of Interest approach using the key AOIs of a face (eyes, nose, and mouth). Also, we used the iMap toolbox to analyze the raw data of participants' fixation on each pixel of the entire face. Results from both types of analyses strongly supported the hypothesis. When viewing target Chinese or Caucasian faces, Chinese participants spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the eyes of other-race Caucasian faces than the eyes of own-race Chinese faces. In contrast, they spent a significantly greater proportion of fixation time on the nose and mouth of Chinese faces than the nose and mouth of Caucasian faces. This pattern of differential fixation, for own- and other-race eyes and nose in particular, was consistent even as participants became increasingly familiar with the target faces of both races. The results could not be explained by the perceptual salience of the Chinese nose or Caucasian eyes because these features were not differentially salient across the races. Our results are discussed in terms of the facial morphological differences between Chinese and Caucasian faces and the enculturation of mutual gaze norms in East Asian cultures.

Highlights

How we process the faces of own- and other-races or differently has been one of the enduring topics in psychology and neuroscience [1,2,3]
Researchers have found that the amplitude of the N170, a negative potential in the posterior scalp sites putatively related to face processing (i.e., at the occipito-temporal (P7/8 and PO7/8) sites) is of lower amplitude when viewing upright own-race faces than when viewing other-race faces [17], suggesting that the other-race effect (ORE) takes place quickly at about 170 ms post stimulus onset
Gabrieli, Chiao, and Eberhardt, using fMRI, found that the bilateral middle fusiform areas, which are highly responsive to faces, had greater activations for own-race faces than other-race faces, and the activations within the left fusiform area were positively correlated with the magnitude of the same-race recognition advantage [18]

Summary

Introduction

How we process the faces of own- and other-races or differently has been one of the enduring topics in psychology and neuroscience [1,2,3]. This question has received extensive empirical investigation since the early 1900s [4], in part because the answers may elucidate a host of important issues in cognitive and social psychology, such as the role of experience in the formation of visual processing expertise and the origin and establishment of racial prejudice and stereotypes [1,2,3,5,6]. Using a novel temporal analysis technique, recently, Natu, Raboy, and O’Toole [19] found that the greater responses to own-race faces relative to other-race faces were mainly in the early stage of stimulus presentation

Methods

Results

Conclusion