Abstract
It was found that face classification by race is more quickly for other-race than own-race faces (other-race classification advantage, ORCA). Controlling the spatial frequencies of face images, the current study investigated the perceptual processing differences based on spatial frequencies between own-race and other-race faces that might account for the ORCA. Regardless of the races of the observers, the own-race faces were classified faster and more accurately for broad-band faces than for both lower and higher spatial frequency (SF) faces, whereas, although other-race faces were classified less accurately for higher SF than for either broad-band or lower SF faces, there was no difference between broad-band and lower SF conditions of other-race faces. Although it was not evident for higher SF condition, the ORCA was more evident for lower SF than that for broad-band faces. The present data indicate that global/configural information is needed for subordinate race categorization of faces and that an important source of ORCA is application of global/configural computations by default while categorizing an own-race face but not while categorizing an other-race face.
Highlights
It is well known that human adults can identify better the age, gender, expression, and identity of own-race faces than of other-race faces, i.e., “the other-race effect”
We found a significant main effect of Stimulus Type, F(2,70) = 37.67, p < 0.001, η2p = 0.52, indicating that faces with BB faces were classified faster (698 ms) than low spatial frequencies (LSF) faces (725 ms, p < .005), which were faster than high spatial frequencies (HSF) (776 ms, p < 0.001)
The other-race classification advantage” (ORCA) was more evident for LSF (RTown−race face minus RTother−race face: 67 ms) than that for BB faces (24 ms; p < 0.005)
Summary
It is well known that human adults can identify better the age, gender, expression, and identity of own-race faces than of other-race faces, i.e., “the other-race effect” (see for a review, Meissner and Brigham, 2001). The specific global structure of faces refers to the first-order relations comprising of two eyes located above the nose and the mouth and on both sides of a vertical axis including the nose and the mouth (Maurer et al, 2002). On the basis of the fact that all normal human faces share the first-order relations, identifying a face at the within-category individuation level relies on a deeper analysis of both the face components such as the eyes, the nose, and the mouth (“feature analysis”) and the computation of spatial-relations between the inner components of faces (“configural analysis”; Maurer et al, 2002)
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