Developing the Own-Race Advantage in 4-, 6-, and 9-Month-Old Taiwanese Infants: A Perceptual Learning Perspective.

Sarina Hui-Lin Chien,Tsung-Ren Huang,Jing-Fong Wang

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01606

Sarina Hui-Lin Chien, Tsung-Ren Huang + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01606

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Abstract

Previous infant studies on the other-race effect have favored the perceptual narrowing view, or declined sensitivities to rarely exposed other-race faces. Here we wish to provide an alternative possibility, perceptual learning, manifested by improved sensitivity for frequently exposed own-race faces in the first year of life. Using the familiarization/visual-paired comparison paradigm, we presented 4-, 6-, and 9-month-old Taiwanese infants with oval-cropped Taiwanese, Caucasian, Filipino faces, and each with three different manipulations of increasing task difficulty (i.e., change identity, change eyes, and widen eye spacing). An adult experiment was first conducted to verify the task difficulty. Our results showed that, with oval-cropped faces, the 4 month-old infants could only discriminate Taiwanese “change identity” condition and not any others, suggesting an early own-race advantage at 4 months. The 6 month-old infants demonstrated novelty preferences in both Taiwanese and Caucasian “change identity” conditions, and proceeded to the Taiwanese “change eyes” condition. The 9-month-old infants demonstrated novelty preferences in the “change identity” condition of all three ethnic faces. They also passed the Taiwanese “change eyes” condition but could not extend this refined ability of detecting a change in the eyes for the Caucasian or Philippine faces. Taken together, we interpret the pattern of results as evidence supporting perceptual learning during the first year: the ability to discriminate own-race faces emerges at 4 months and continues to refine, while the ability to discriminate other-race faces emerges between 6 and 9 months and retains at 9 months. Additionally, the discrepancies in the face stimuli and methods between studies advocating the narrowing view and those supporting the learning view were discussed.

Highlights

Race is more of a social category than a biological one; the influence of race is implicit but profoundly important (Cosmides et al, 2003)
The results showed that the Ethnicity main effect was not significant (p = 0.288), the mean accuracies for Taiwanese (M = 79.84%, SE = 2.19%), Filipino (M = 78.54%, SE = 2.33%), Caucasian (M = 79.28%, SE = 2.35%), and African faces (M = 78.54%, SE = 2.29% ) were about equal
Underpinned by interracial adoption studies as well as many others, other-race effect (ORE) has been attributed to a lack of visual experience with other-race faces

Summary

Introduction

Race is more of a social category than a biological one; the influence of race is implicit but profoundly important (Cosmides et al, 2003). Studies based on the spontaneous preference paradigm showed that 3-month-old Caucasian infants, but not newborns, exhibited spontaneous looking preference for Caucasian face when paired with other-race faces (Kelly et al, 2005). Ethiopian orphan infants who were frequently exposed to both Ethiopian and Israeli adults preferred African and Caucasian faces (Bar-Haim et al, 2006). It appears that infants at 3 months are sensitive to “race” and their looking preferences are influenced by the faces of the dominant race in early environment. Two recent studies using preferential looking methods further revealed a rather dynamic development of infant’s preference for own- vs. other-race faces from 3 to 9 months; at 9 months, infants’ spontaneous preference tilts toward other-race face instead (Fassbender et al, 2015; Liu et al, 2015)

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