User menu

Accès à distance ? S'identifier sur le proxy UCLouvain

The role of experience during childhood in shaping the other-race effect

Primary tabs

de Heering, Adélaïde [UCL] de Liedekerke, Claire [UCL] Deboni, Malorie [UCL] Rossion, Bruno [UCL]

It is well known that adults' face recognition is characterized by an 'other-race effect' (ORE; see Meissner & Brigham, 2001), but few studies have investigated this ORE during the development of the face processing system. Here we examined the role of experience with other-race faces during childhood by testing a group of 6- to 14-year-old Asian children adopted between 2 and 26 months in Caucasian families living in Western Europe, as well as a group of age-matched Caucasian children. The latter group showed a strong ORE in favour of own-race faces that was stable from 6 to 14 years of age. The adopted participants did not show a significant reversal of the ORE, unlike a recently reported study (Sangrigoli et al., 2005), but rather comparable results with Asian and Caucasian faces. Their pattern of performance was neither influenced by their age of adoption, nor by the amount of experience they accumulated during childhood with other-race faces. These results indicate that the balance of performance with Asian and Caucasian faces can be modulated, but not completely reversed, in children whose exposure to own- and other-race faces changes drastically during the period of maturation of the face recognition system, depending on the length of exposure to the new face race. Overall, experience appears to be crucial during childhood to shape the face recognition system towards the most predominant morphologies of faces present in the environment.

Document type Article de périodique (Journal article) – Article de recherche
Access type Accès restreint
Publication date 2010
Language Anglais
Journal information "Developmental Science" - Vol. 13, no. 1, p. 181-187 (2010)
Peer reviewed yes
Publisher Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. ((United Kingdom) Oxford)
issn 1363-755X
e-issn 1467-7687
Publication status Publié
Affiliations UCL - PSP/PSP - faculté de psychologie et des sciences de l'éducation
UCL - SSH/IPSY - Psychological Sciences Research Institute
UCL - SSS/IONS - Institute of NeuroScience
UCL - SSS/IONS - Institute of NeuroScience
UCL - SSS/IONS/COSY - Systems & cognitive Neuroscience
MESH Subject Vietnam ; Recognition (Psychology) - physiology ; Reaction Time - physiology ; Pattern Recognition, Visual - physiology ; Neuropsychological Tests ; Male ; Humans ; Female ; Face ; European Continental Ancestry Group ; Cross-Cultural Comparison ; Continental Population Groups ; China ; Child ; Attention - physiology
Links
  1. Bar-Haim, Psychological Science, 17, 159 (2006)
  2. Brigham, Memory and suggestibility in the forensic interview, 115 (2002)
  3. Carey, Developmental Psychology, 16, 257 (1980)
  4. Chance June E., Turner Alison Lockwood, Goldstein Alvin G., Development of Differential Recognition for Own- and Other-Race Faces, 10.1080/00223980.1982.9923531
  5. Corenblum, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 93, 187 (2006)
  6. Cross John F., Cross Jane, Daly James, Sex, race, age, and beauty as factors in recognition of faces, 10.3758/bf03210319
  7. De Heering, PLOS One, 3, e2317 (2008)
  8. Elliott Elaine S., Wills Elizabeth J., Goldstein Alvin G., The effects of discrimination training on the recognition of white and oriental faces, 10.3758/bf03327717
  9. Feinman, Child Development, 47, 506 (1976)
  10. Furl, Cognitive Science, 96, 1 (2002)
  11. Goldstein Alvin G., Chance June E., Memory for Faces and Schema Theory, 10.1080/00223980.1980.9915131
  12. Goldstein Alvin G., Chance June E., Effects of training on Japanese face recognition: Reduction of the other-race effect, 10.3758/bf03329829
  13. Hancock, British Journal of Psychology, 99, 45 (2008)
  14. Kelly, Infancy, 11, 87 (2007a)
  15. Kelly, Psychological Science, 18, 1084 (2007b)
  16. Kelly, Developmental Science, 8, 31 (2005)
  17. Kuefner, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 34, 811 (2008)
  18. Kuhl, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 4, 812 (1994)
  19. Kuhl, Mechanistic relationships between development and learning, 53 (1998)
  20. Le, Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 26, 64 (2002)
  21. Levin Daniel T., Race as a visual feature: Using visual search and perceptual discrimination tasks to understand face categories and the cross-race recognition deficit., 10.1037/0096-3445.129.4.559
  22. Malpass Roy S., Lavigueur Henry, Weldon David E., Verbal and visual training in face recognition, 10.3758/bf03212392
  23. Meissner, Psychology, Public Policy and Law, 7, 3 (2001)
  24. Michel, Visual Cognition, 14, 55 (2006a)
  25. Michel, Psychological Science, 17, 608 (2006b)
  26. Mondloch, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 86, 67 (2003)
  27. Pezdek, Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 760 (2003)
  28. Rhodes Gillian, Brake Susan, Taylor Karyn, Tan Shirley, Expertise and configural coding in face recognition, 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1989.tb02323.x
  29. Sangrigoli, Developmental Science, 7, 74 (2004a)
  30. Sangrigoli, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines, 45, 1219 (2004b)
  31. Sangrigoli, Psychological Science, 16, 440 (2005)
  32. Slone Ashlyn E., Brigham John C., Meissner Christian A., Social and Cognitive Factors Affecting the Own-Race Bias in Whites, 10.1207/s15324834basp2202_1
  33. Tanaka, Cognition, 93, B1 (2004)
  34. Valentine Tim, A unified account of the effects of distinctiveness, inversion, and race in face recognition, 10.1080/14640749108400966
  35. Walker, Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20, 461 (2006)
Bibliographic reference de Heering, Adélaïde ; de Liedekerke, Claire ; Deboni, Malorie ; Rossion, Bruno. The role of experience during childhood in shaping the other-race effect. In: Developmental Science, Vol. 13, no. 1, p. 181-187 (2010)
Permanent URL http://hdl.handle.net/2078.1/29213