Abstract
Recognizing individual faces is an important human ability that highly depends on experience. This is reflected in the so called other-race effect; adults are better at recognizing faces from their own ethnic group, while very young infants do not show this specialization yet. Two experiments examined whether 3-year-old children from two different cultural backgrounds show the other-race effect. In Experiment 1, German children (N = 41) were presented with a forced choice paradigm where they were asked to recognize female Caucasian or African faces. In Experiment 2, 3-year-olds from Cameroon (N = 66) participated in a similar task using the same stimulus material. In both cultures the other-race effect was present; children were better at recognizing individual faces from their own ethnic group. In addition, German children performed at a higher overall level of accuracy than Cameroonians. The results are discussed in relation to cultural aspects in particular.
Highlights
The other-race-effect (ORE) is a robust finding in adults’ face recognition, with more accurate discrimination and recognition of faces of one’s own race compared to faces from a different race (e.g., Meissner and Brigham, 2001)
The results presented here showed an advantage for the recognition of own-race faces in Cameroonian children
Cameroonian children were more accurate for faces of their own ethnic group than for faces of a different ethnic group
Summary
The other-race-effect (ORE) is a robust finding in adults’ face recognition, with more accurate discrimination and recognition of faces of one’s own race compared to faces from a different race (e.g., Meissner and Brigham, 2001). It is impressive that the ORE emerges very early in life between 3 and 9 months of age (Kelly et al, 2007) This holds true for faces of different races and for infants from different cultures suggesting the universality of the phenomenon (Kelly et al, 2009). Among other age groups they investigated 3-year old Caucasian children’s face recognition using Caucasian and Asian faces. They found a floor effect and no ORE in the 3-year olds. The present study aimed at further investigating the ORE in 3-year-old children by testing children from two different ethnic groups, Caucasian and African children from Germany and Cameroon, respectively, with a matching paradigm that provides the children with sufficient encoding times
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
