Recognition Of Other-race Faces Research Articles

Closing a conceptual gap in race perception research: A functional integration of the other-race face recognition and "who said what?" paradigms.

White people confuse Black faces more than their own-race faces. This is an example of the other-race effect, commonly measured by the other-race face recognition task. Like this task, the "Who said what?" paradigm uses within-race confusions in memory, but to measure social categorization strength. The former finds a strongly asymmetrical pattern of interrace perception, the other-race effect, yet the latter usually finds symmetrical patterns (equally strong categorization of own-race and other-race faces). In a "Who said what?" meta-analysis, racial categorization and individuation across races were only weakly asymmetrical (Study 1, n = 2,669). We aimed to resolve this empirical misalignment. As tested in other-race face recognition tasks, the weak asymmetry was not due to the limited number of portrait stimuli (Study 2, N = 99) nor to the longer duration of stimulus presentation in the "Who said what?" task (Study 4, n = 358). Pairing portraits with statements reduced the other-race effect (Study 3, n = 126). Showing each portrait repeatedly also reduced the other-race effect (Study 4, n = 358; Study 5, n = 470) but did not decrease infrahumanization of Black portraits (Study 6, n = 487). Consequently, presenting portraits only once in the "Who said what?" paradigm (Study 7, N = 112) resulted in strong interrace categorization and individuation asymmetries. This finding bridges a central conceptual gap between the other-race effect and social categorization strength. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Null effect of anodal and cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on own- and other-race face recognition

ABSTRACTSuccessful face recognition is important for social interactions and public security. Although some preliminary evidence suggests that anodal and cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) might modulate own- and other-race face identification, respectively, the findings are largely inconsistent. Hence, we examined the effect of both anodal and cathodal tDCS on the recognition of own- and other-race faces. Ninety participants first completed own- and other-race Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) as baseline measurements. Next, they received either anodal tDCS, cathodal tDCS or sham stimulation and finally they completed alternative versions of the own- and other-race CFMT. No difference in performance, in terms of accuracy and reaction time, for own- and other-race face recognition between anodal tDCS, cathodal tDCS and sham stimulation was found. Our findings cast doubt upon the efficacy of tDCS to modulate performance in face identification tasks.

The culture of perceptual expertise and the other‐race effect

In our commentary, we propose that the ORE can be viewed as a form of perceptual expertise. Like experts, we recognize own-race faces at the subordinate level as individuals and novices when recognize other-race faces at the basic level of race. Applying a perceptual expertise account, we explain the ORE in terms of its cognitive, neural, and motivational factors. We suggest that by creating a culture of "other-race" expertise, improvements in other-race face recognition can be achieved.

Covariation in the recognition of own-race and other-race faces argues against the role of group bias in the other race effect

A dominant theory of the other race effect (ORE) is that group-bias causes us to process own-race and other-race faces using different cognitive processes. To test this theory, we measured individual differences across two face recognition tasks. Our predictions were that the magnitude and pattern of performance on own-race faces would not predict performance on other-race faces and that participants would take more time with own-race faces. In a face matching task, we found that participants were more accurate with own-race faces compared to other-race faces. However, performance on own-race faces was highly correlated with performance on other-race faces. In a face sorting task, participants made fewer piles and fewer errors (i.e. higher accuracy) with own-race faces compared to other-race faces. However, we again found that performance on own-race faces was highly correlated with performance on other-race faces. The covariation in performance between own-race and other-race faces suggests that they engage similar perceptual processes. Finally, we found that participants did not spend more time on tasks involving own-race faces suggesting that different levels of motivation do not explain the ORE. Together, these findings argue against the idea that group bias leads to different perceptual processing of own-race and other-race faces.

The effect of implicit racial bias on recognition of other-race faces

Previous research has established a possible link between recognition performance, individuation experience, and implicit racial bias of other-race faces. However, it remains unclear how implicit racial bias might influence other-race face processing in observers with relatively extensive experience with the other race. Here we examined how recognition of other-race faces might be modulated by observers’ implicit racial bias, in addition to the effects of experience and face recognition ability. Caucasian participants in a culturally diverse city completed a memory task for Asian and Caucasian faces, an implicit association test, a questionnaire assessing experience with Asians and Caucasians, and a face recognition ability test. As expected, recognition performance for Asian faces was positively predicted by increased face recognition ability, and experience with Asians. More importantly, it was also negatively predicted by increased positive bias towards Asians, which was modulated by an interaction between face recognition ability and implicit bias, with the effect of implicit bias observed predominantly in observers with high face recognition ability. Moreover, the positions of the first two fixations when participants learned the other-race faces were affected by different factors, with the first fixation modulated by the effect of experience and the second fixation modulated by the interaction between implicit bias and face recognition ability. Taken together, these findings suggest the complexity in understanding the perceptual and socio-cognitive influences on the other-race effect, and that observers with high face recognition ability may more likely evaluate racial features involuntarily when recognizing other-race faces.

Can language modulate perceptual narrowing for faces? Other-race face recognition in infants is modulated by language experience

Between 6 and 9 months, while infant’s ability to discriminate faces within their own racial group is maintained, discrimination of faces within other-race groups declines to a point where 9-month-old infants fail to discriminate other-race faces. Such face perception narrowing can be overcome in various ways at 9 or 12 months of age, such as presenting faces with emotional expressions. Can language itself modulate face narrowing? Many adult studies suggest that language has an impact on the recognition of individuals. For example, adults remember faces previously paired with their native language more accurately than faces paired with a non-native language. We have previously found that from 9 months of age, own-race faces associated with the native language can be learned and recognized whereas own-race faces associated with a non-native language cannot. Based on the language familiarity effect, we hypothesized that the native language could restore recognition of other-race faces after perceptual narrowing has happened. We tested 9- and 12-month-old Caucasian infants. During a familiarization phase, infants were shown still photographs of an Asian face while audio was played either in the native or in the non-native language. Immediately after the familiarization, the familiar face and a novel one were displayed side-by-side for the recognition test. We compared the proportional looking time to the new face to the chance level. Both 9- and 12-month-old infants exhibited recognition memory for the other-race face when familiarized with non-native speech, but not with their native speech. Native language did not facilitate recognition of other-race faces after 9 months of age but a non-native language did, suggesting that 9- and 12-month-olds already have expectations about which language an individual should talk (or at least not talk). Our results confirm the strong links between face and speech processing during infancy.

The Importance of Internal and External Features in Matching Own and Other Race Faces.

Research has shown that we are better at discriminating between faces that are our own race, and much less accurate with faces of another race. When the external features of faces were removed, this reduced the accuracy for recognizing other-races faces, more than own-race faces, suggesting that the external features (hair, face shape) are especially important for the recognition of other-race faces. The aim of the current study was to determine whether external features were more useful in matching other-race faces, and whether this was the case for Western and Eastern viewers. The current study employed a face matching task with Caucasian (U.K.) and Asian (Chinese) participants and found that responses were more accurate for own-race faces, and for whole faces when compared with faces where the internal or external features had been removed. Removing the external features of other-race faces increased the own-race bias for Chinese and U.K. participants, demonstrating the importance of viewing whole faces, including the external features when matching other-race faces.

Facial expressions of anger improve neural correlates of memory retrieval but not encoding of only same-race faces

The other-race effect is the phenomenon that people are better able to recognize and remember faces of their same race. Angry faces have been shown to facilitate processes that promote face recognition as reflected in the proportion of remembered faces after study. The other-race effect may be diminished when other-race faces display negative expressions, but no event-related potential studies have examined whether this improvement in other-race face recognition occurs during facial encoding or recognition. The current study used the old-new recognition task to examine whether anger reduces the other-race effect by improving face memory for other-race faces in comparison to neutral faces and whether this improvement would be reflected during encoding or retrieval. Caucasian and African American faces were rated as angry or neutral by a separate pool of Caucasian participants. Caucasian and African/African American participants in the old-new task studied the faces rated as most angry or neutral and later identified them among distractors in the test phase. The Dm, FN400, and parietal old-new effect were recorded during the study and test phase for Caucasian participants. Anger did not improve other-race face memory in behavior for either race of participants. For Caucasian participants, activation increased during retrieval of previously studied angry Caucasian faces, which indicates more detailed memory retrieval of same-race as compared to other-race angry faces. This is evidence that experience with same-race faces and not stereotypes of other-race faces influences the other-race effect during memory retrieval.

Why the other-race effect matters: Poor recognition of other-race faces impacts everyday social interactions.

What happens to everyday social interactions when other-race recognition fails? Here, we provide the first formal investigation of this question. We gave East Asian international students (N = 89) a questionnaire concerning their experiences of the other-race effect (ORE) in Australia, and a laboratory test of their objective other-race face recognition deficit using the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT). As a 'perpetrator' of the ORE, participants reported that their problems telling apart Caucasian people contributed significantly to difficulties socializing with them. Moreover, the severity of this problem correlated with their ORE on the CFMT. As a 'victim' of the ORE, participants reported that Caucasians' problems telling them apart also contributed to difficulties socializing. Further, 81% of participants had been confused with other Asians by a Caucasian authority figure (e.g., university tutor, workplace boss), resulting in varying levels of upset/difficulty. When compared to previously established contributors to international students' high rates of social isolation, ORE-related problems were perceived as equally important as the language barrier and only moderately less important than cultural differences. We conclude that the real-world impact of the ORE extends beyond previously identified specialized settings (eyewitness testimony, security), to common everyday situations experienced by all humans.

Self-reported face recognition abilities for own and other-race faces

PurposeThe other-race effect shows that people are better recognizing faces from their own-race compared to other-race faces. This effect can have dramatic consequences in applied scenarios whereby face identification is paramount, such as eyewitness identification. This paper aims to investigate whether observers have insights into their ability to recognize other-race faces.Design/methodology/approachChinese ethnic observers performed objective measures of own- and other-race face recognition – the Cambridge Face Memory Test Chinese and the Cambridge Face Memory Test original; the PI20 – a 20-items self-reported measured of general face recognition abilities; and the ORE20 – a new developed 20-items self-reported measure of other-race face recognition.FindingsRecognition of own-race faces was better compared to other-race faces. This effect was also evident at a phenomenological level, as observers reported to be worse recognizing other-race faces compared to own-race faces. Additionally, although a moderate correlation was found between own-race face recognition abilities and the PI20, individual differences in the recognition of other-race faces was only poorly associated with observers’ scores in the ORE20.Research limitations/implicationsThese results suggest that observers’ insights to recognize faces are more consistent and reliable for own-race faces.Practical implicationsSelf-reported measures of other-race recognition could produce misleading results. Thus, when evaluating eyewitness’ accuracy identifying other-race faces, objective measures should be used.Originality/valueIn contrast to own race recognition, people have very limited insights into their recognition abilities for other race faces.

Do perceptual expertise and implicit racial bias predict early face-sensitive ERP responses?

Studies examining the visual perception of face race have revealed mixed findings regarding the presence or direction of effects on early face-sensitive event-related potential (ERP) components. Few studies have examined how early ERP components are influenced by individual differences in bottom-up and top-down processes involved in face perception, and how such factors might interact to influence early face-sensitive ERP components has yet to be investigated. Thus, the current study examined whether P100, N170, and P200 responses can be predicted by individual differences in own- and other-race face recognition, implicit racial bias, and their interaction. Race effects were observed in the P100, N170, and P200 responses. Other-race face recognition, implicit racial biases, and their interaction explained a significant amount of unique variability in N170 responses when viewing other-race faces. Responses to own-race faces were minimally influenced with only implicit racial bias predicting a significant amount of unique variability in N170 latency when viewing own-race faces. Face recognition, implicit racial bias, or their interaction did not predict P100 responses. The current findings suggest that face recognition abilities and its interaction with implicit racial bias modulate the early stages of other-race face processing.

Recognising other-race faces is more effortful: The effect of individuation instructions on encoding-related ERP Dm effects

Humans are better at recognising faces from their own vs. another ethnic background. Socio-cognitive theories of this own-race bias (ORB) propose that reduced recognition of other-race faces results from less motivation to attend to individuating information during encoding. Accordingly, individuation instructions that explain the phenomenon and instruct participants to attend to other-race faces during learning attenuate or eliminate the ORB. However, it is still unclear how exactly such instructions affect other-race face processing. We addressed this question by investigating encoding-related event-related brain potentials, contrasting neural activity of subsequently remembered and forgotten items (Dm effects). In line with socio-cognitive accounts, individuation instructions reduced the ORB. Critically, instructions increased Dm effects for other-race faces, suggesting that more processing resources were allocated to these faces during encoding. Thus, compensating for reduced experience with other-race faces is possible to some extent, but additional resources are needed to decrease difficulties resulting from a lack of perceptual expertise.

Emotional expressions reinstate recognition of other-race faces in infants following perceptual narrowing.

Perceptual narrowing occurs in human infants for other-race faces. A paired-comparison task measuring infant looking time was used to investigate the hypothesis that adding emotional expressiveness to other-race faces would help infants break through narrowing and reinstate other-race face recognition. Experiment 1 demonstrated narrowing for White infants viewing neutral Asian faces: whereas 3-month-olds differentiated Asian faces, 6-month-olds did not. Experiment 2 showed that White 6-month-olds differentiated the same Asian faces depicted with angry or happy expressions. Experiments 3 and 4 yielded comparable results for 6- and 9-month-olds tested with Black faces (i.e., narrowing with neutral faces, reinstatement of sensitivity when the faces were presented with emotion). Experiment 5 showed that White 6-month-olds did not differentiate inverted angry or happy Asian faces, and that White 9-month-olds did not differentiate inverted angry or happy Black faces. Looking time during familiarization did not differ for upright neutral and emotional faces, indicating that the expressions did not yield more salient stimuli. Also, consistent with the inversion findings, analyses of the low-level image properties as well as equivalent pairwise similarity ratings obtained from White adults for the neutral and emotional faces indicated that the expressions did not simply create more discriminable stimuli. Without support for the lower-level accounts, we discuss the possibility that the infants processed the communicative intent of the expressions. Because angry faces pose threat and happy faces invite affiliation, expression may create motivation to individuate. Overall, the data suggest that early perceptual-social linkage in face representation can arise via a social-to-perceptual pathway. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Supplemental Material for Emotional Expressions Reinstate Recognition of Other-Race Faces in Infants Following Perceptual Narrowing

Supplemental Material for Emotional Expressions Reinstate Recognition of Other-Race Faces in Infants Following Perceptual Narrowing

A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact

Poor recognition of other-race faces is ubiquitous around the world. We resolve a longstanding contradiction in the literature concerning whether interracial social contact improves the other-race effect. For the first time, we measure the age at which contact was experienced. Taking advantage of unusual demographics allowing dissociation of childhood from adult contact, results show sufficient childhood contact eliminated poor other-race recognition altogether (confirming inter-country adoption studies). Critically, however, the developmental window for easy acquisition of other-race faces closed by approximately 12 years of age and social contact as an adult — even over several years and involving many other-race friends — produced no improvement. Theoretically, this pattern of developmental change in plasticity mirrors that found in language, suggesting a shared origin grounded in the functional importance of both skills to social communication. Practically, results imply that, where parents wish to ensure their offspring develop the perceptual skills needed to recognise other-race people easily, childhood experience should be encouraged: just as an English-speaking person who moves to France as a child (but not an adult) can easily become a native speaker of French, we can easily become “native recognisers” of other-race faces via natural social exposure obtained in childhood, but not later.

Caricaturing as a general method to improve poor face recognition: Evidence from low-resolution images, other-race faces, and older adults.

There are multiple well-established situations in which humans' face recognition performance is poor, including for low-resolution images, other-race faces, and in older adult observers. Here we show that caricaturing faces-that is, exaggerating their appearance away from an average face-can provide a useful applied method for improving face recognition across all these circumstances. We employ a face-name learning task offering a number of methodological advantages (e.g., valid comparison of the size of the caricature improvement across conditions differing in overall accuracy). Across six experiments, we (a) extend previous evidence that caricaturing can improve recognition of low-resolution (blurred) faces; (b) show for the first time that caricaturing improves recognition and perception of other-race faces; and (c) show for the first time that caricaturing improves recognition in observers across the whole adult life span (testing older adults, M age = 71 years). In size, caricature benefits were at least as large where natural face recognition is poor (other-race, low resolution, older adults) as for the naturally best situation (own-race high-resolution faces in young adults). We discuss potential for practical applicability to improving face recognition in low-vision patients (age-related macular degeneration, bionic eye), security settings (police, passport control), eyewitness testimony, and prosopagnosia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

The Influence of Anxiety on the Recognition of Facial Emotion Depends on the Emotion Category and Race of the Target Faces.

The recognition of emotional facial expressions is critical for our social interactions. While some prior studies have shown that a high anxiety level is associated with more sensitive recognition of emotion, there are also reports supporting that anxiety did not affect or reduce the sensitivity to the recognition of facial emotions. To reconcile these results, here we investigated whether the effect of individual anxiety on the recognition of facial emotions is dependent on the emotion category and the race of the target faces. We found that, first, there was a significant positive correlation between the individual anxiety level and the recognition sensitivity for angry faces but not for sad or happy faces. Second, while the correlation was significant for both low- and high-intensity angry faces during the recognition of the observer's own-race faces, there was significant correlation only for low-intensity angry faces during the recognition of other-race faces. Collectively, our results suggest that the influence of anxiety on the recognition of facial emotions is flexible depending on the characteristics of the target face stimuli including emotion category and race.

Own-race and other-race face recognition problems without visual expertise problems in dyslexic readers

Both intact and deficient neural processing of faces has been found in dyslexic readers. Similarly, behavioral studies have shown both normal and abnormal face processing in developmental dyslexia. We tested whether dyslexic adults are impaired in tests of own-race and other-race face recognition. As both face and word recognition rely considerably on visual expertise, we wished to investigate whether face recognition problems of dyslexic readers might stem from difficulties with experience-driven expert visual processing. We utilized the finding that people tend to be worse at discriminating other-race faces compared to own-race faces, the so-called other-race effect, thought to reflect greater experience with own-race faces. If visual expertise is compromised in dyslexic readers, so that their visual system is not effectively shaped by experience, then they might show a diminished other-race effect. Matched dyslexic and typical readers completed two tests of own- and other-race face recognition. The results show that dyslexic readers have problems with recognizing faces, and these difficulties are not fully accounted for by general problems with attention or memory. However, recognition is compromised for both own- and other-race faces, and the strength of the other-race effect does not differ between dyslexic and typical readers. There was individual variability in both groups, and an exploratory analysis revealed that while dyslexic readers with no university education showed deficits in face recognition, the dyslexic participants with higher education did not. We conclude that dyslexic readers as a group have face recognition problems. These are potentially modulated by educational level but compromised visual expertise cannot demonstrably account for the face recognition problems associated with dyslexia. We discuss the implications of these findings for theoretical accounts of dyslexia and for theories of word and face recognition.

Strategies for improving own-and other-race face recognition with learning context and multiple image training

Strategies for improving own-and other-race face recognition with learning context and multiple image training

Learning context and the other-race effect: Strategies for improving face recognition

People recognize faces of their own race more accurately than faces of other races—a phenomenon known as the “Other-Race Effect” (ORE). Previous studies show that training with multiple variable images improves face recognition. Building on multi-image training, we take a novel approach to improving own- and other-race face recognition by testing the role of learning context on accuracy. Learning context was either contiguous, with multiple images of each identity seen in sequence, or distributed, with multiple images of an identity randomly interspersed among different identities. In two experiments, East Asian and Caucasian participants learned own- and other-races faces either in a contiguous or distributed order. In Experiment 1, people learned each identity from four highly variable face images. In Experiment 2, identities were learned from one image, repeated four times. In both experiments we found a robust other-race effect. The effect of learning context, however, differed depending on the variability of the learned images. The distributed presentation yielded better recognition when people learned from single repeated images (Exp. 1), but not when they learned from multiple variable images (Exp. 2). Overall, performance was better with multiple-image training than repeated single image training. We conclude that multiple-image training and distributed learning can both improve recognition accuracy, but via distinct processes. The former broadens perceptual tolerance for image variation from a face, when there are diverse images available to learn. The latter effectively strengthens the representation of differences among similar faces, when there is only a single learning image.