Caucasian infants scan own- and other-race faces differently.

Andrea Wheeler,Danielle S Omrin,Kang Lee,Paul C Quinn,Olivier Pascalis,Gizelle Anzures,Jan Lauwereyns

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0018621

Abstract

Young infants are known to prefer own-race faces to other race faces and recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. However, it is entirely unclear as to whether infants also attend to different parts of own- and other-race faces differently, which may provide an important clue as to how and why the own-race face recognition advantage emerges so early. The present study used eye tracking methodology to investigate whether 6- to 10-month-old Caucasian infants (N = 37) have differential scanning patterns for dynamically displayed own- and other-race faces. We found that even though infants spent a similar amount of time looking at own- and other-race faces, with increased age, infants increasingly looked longer at the eyes of own-race faces and less at the mouths of own-race faces. These findings suggest experience-based tuning of the infant's face processing system to optimally process own-race faces that are different in physiognomy from other-race faces. In addition, the present results, taken together with recent own- and other-race eye tracking findings with infants and adults, provide strong support for an enculturation hypothesis that East Asians and Westerners may be socialized to scan faces differently due to each culture's conventions regarding mutual gaze during interpersonal communication.

Highlights

In recent years, one of the most heavily investigated topics within face processing research has been the differential processing of own- and other-race faces
Because the purpose of the present study was to examine whether infants fixate on different parts of the own- and other-race faces differently or we first created three Areas of Interest (AOIs) for the eyes, nose, and mouth by outlining them with a small buffer area to allow for feature and head movements during the recording
The present study investigated the visual attention of infants to faces belonging to their own race and faces of another race with the use of the eye tracking methodology

Summary

Introduction

One of the most heavily investigated topics within face processing research has been the differential processing of own- and other-race faces The popularity of this topic can be attributed to multiple factors including the fact that the topic contributes to our understanding of the relationship between experience and visual information processing [1]. Several hypotheses have been proposed to account for the recognition effect, among which the contact hypothesis has received the most attention [5,18]. This hypothesis suggests that extensive experience with own-race faces and a relative lack of experience with other-race faces leads to better processing for own-race faces than other-race faces

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Conclusion