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Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces

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Adults are sensitive to the physical differences that define ethnic groups. However, the age at which we become sensitive to ethnic differences is currently unclear. Our study aimed to clarify this by testing newborns and young infants for sensitivity to ethnicity using a visual preference (VP) paradigm. While newborn infants demonstrated no spontaneous preference for faces from either their own- or other-ethnic groups, 3-month-old infants demonstrated a significant preference for faces from their own-ethnic group. These results suggest that preferential selectivity based on ethnic differences is not present in the first days of life, but is learned within the first 3 months of life. The findings imply that adults' perceptions of ethnic differences are learned and derived from differences in exposure to own- versus other-race faces during early development.
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Three-month-olds, but not newborns, prefer own-race faces
David J. Kelly1, Paul C. Quinn2, Alan M. Slater3, Kang Lee4, Alan Gibson1, Michael Smith1,
Liezhong Ge5, and Olivier Pascalis1
1Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK
2Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, USA
3School of Psychology, University of Exeter, UK
4Department of Psychology, UCSD, USA
5Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, P.R. China
Abstract
Adults are sensitive to the physical differences that define ethnic groups. However, the age at which
we become sensitive to ethnic differences is currently unclear. Our study aimed to clarify this by
testing newborns and young infants for sensitivity to ethnicity using a visual preference (VP)
paradigm. While newborn infants demonstrated no spontaneous preference for faces from either their
own- or other-ethnic groups, 3-month-old infants demonstrated a significant preference for faces
from their own-ethnic group. These results suggest that preferential selectivity based on ethnic
differences is not present in the first days of life, but is learned within the first 3 months of life. The
findings imply that adults' perceptions of ethnic differences are learned and derived from differences
in exposure to own- versus other-race faces during early development.
Introduction
Historically, the perception of human races has had major ramifications for the social and
economic livelihoods of people throughout the world. Adults very rapidly make judgements
and categorize people according to ethnicity (Levin, 2000; Valentine & Endo, 1992). It is likely
that both skin color and physiognomic differences are used to make such judgements.
Hirschfeld (1998) suggests that sensitivity to ethnicity is more than knowledge concerning
observable, physical differences and instead is a specialized cognitive strategy for reasoning
about human collectives. However, while the origins of ethnic categorization must originate
from some form of sensitivity to ethnic differences, exactly when and how such knowledge
develops is unclear.
In the first few days of life, newborn infants demonstrate a visual preference for faces (Fantz,
1963; Goren, Sarty & Wu, 1975; Johnson, Dziurawiec, Ellis & Morton, 1991; Maurer &
Young, 1983; Valenza, Simion, Macchi Cassia & Umiltà, 1996; but see Easterbrook,
Kisilevsky, Hains & Muir, 1999), a preference for their mother's face over a stranger's face
(Bushnell, Sai & Mullin, 1989; Field, Cohen, Garcia & Greenburg, 1984; Pascalis, de Schonen,
Morton, Deruelle & Fabre-Grenet, 1995) and the ability to discriminate between faces from
their own-ethnic group (Pascalis & de Schonen, 1994). Also, newborns demonstrate a
preference for attractive over unattractive faces (Slater, von der Schulenburg, Brown,
Correspondence to: David J. Kelly.
Address for correspondence: David J. Kelly, Department of Psychology, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TP, UK; e-mail:
david.kelly@sheffield.ac.uk.
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Published in final edited form as:
Dev Sci. 2005 November ; 8(6): F31–F36. doi:10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.0434a.x.
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Badenoch, Butterworth, Parsons & Samuels, 1998) and use information from internal facial
features when making this preference (Slater, Bremner, Johnson, Sherwood, Hayes & Brown,
2000). Furthermore, newborns will imitate an array of facial gestures performed by an adult
(Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). Collectively, these findings suggest that newborns very rapidly
form a face representation, are sensitive to subtle physiognomic variations, attend to internal
facial features and learn from faces in their visual environment.
There is mounting evidence in support of the proposal that the face processing system is shaped
by the faces seen in the visual environment (de Schonen & Mathivet, 1989; Morton & Johnson,
1991; Nelson, 2001). Experiential effects on face processing have thus far been reported for
the attributes of gender, race and species. With respect to gender, at 3 months of age, infants
raised primarily by a female caregiver demonstrate a preference for female faces over male
faces and are better able to discriminate among female faces than among male faces.
Conversely, infants raised primarily by a male caregiver demonstrate a preference for male
faces over female faces (Quinn, Yahr, Kuhn, Slater & Pascalis, 2002).
For the attribute of race, Sangrigoli and de Schonen (2004) have recently demonstrated that at
3 months of age Caucasian infants are able to discriminate between own-race faces, but not
other-race faces. This discrimination bias may represent an early manifestation of a similar
deficit seen in adults, which is typically called the other-race effect (ORE; Meissner & Brigham,
2001). However, the effect present in infants appears to have greater plasticity than the effect
reported in adults. In a follow-up experiment from Sangrigoli and de Schonen (2004), when
infants were familiarized with three individual faces, as opposed to one in the first experiment,
they were able to demonstrate recognition with both ownand other-race faces. This latter result
suggests that with only limited experiences with faces from another race, abilities to
discriminate within own- and other-race face categories can be rendered equivalent.
With regard to the processing of species information from faces, at 6 months of age, infants
are able to discriminate both human and monkey faces, whereas 9-month-olds and adults can
only discriminate human faces (Pascalis, de Haan & Nelson, 2002). However, exposure to
monkey faces between 6 and 9 months of age allows the infant to maintain the ability to
discriminate monkey faces (Pascalis, Scott, Kelly, Shannon, Nicholson, Coleman & Nelson,
2005). The combined results from the studies of gender, race and species processing of faces
by infants illustrate that facial input received early in life influences the development of the
infant face representation and subsequent face processing abilities.
The notion of a face representation is best understood within the framework of the
multidimensional face space model described by Valentine (1991). Valentine proposes a norm-
based coding model in which faces are encoded as vectors according to their deviation from a
prototypical average. At birth, the dimensions of the prototype are likely to be broad and largely
unspecified (Nelson, 2001) with the development of the prototype being dependent on facial
input. The resulting dimensions will differ according to the input received with certain salient,
individuating dimensions carrying more ‘weight’ than others. Predominant exposure to faces
of a specific gender, ethnicity or species early in life may result in both the physiognomic and
skin color dimensions of one's prototype becoming ‘tuned’ towards such faces.
The aim of the current study was to further investigate the emergence of sensitivity to ethnicity
and how it is shaped by the infant's visual environment. It also sought to investigate a possible
mechanism by which differential experience with same- versus other-race faces might lead to
superior recognition of same-race faces (i.e. the ORE). Specifically, we examined whether
early differential experience with same- versus other-race might lead to an acquired preference
for same- versus other-race faces.
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To assess spontaneous preference for same- versus other-race faces, Caucasian newborn and
3-month-old infants were exposed to faces from a range of ethnic groups using a Visual-
Preference (VP) task. The VP task has been successfully used in previous studies to assess
both newborns' (e.g. Pascalis et al., 1995; Slater et al., 1998, 2000) and 3-month olds' (e.g.
Quinn et al., 2002) spontaneous preference for stimuli. Our expectation is that, due to a lack
of exposure to faces in general, newborns will not display a preference for faces from any
ethnic group. However, an alternative possibility is that newborns will have already encoded
the skin color and physiognomic information from their mother's face and subsequently prefer
faces which most closely match that color and physiognomy (i.e. Caucasian). Therefore, it
remains unclear whether newborns will demonstrate spontaneous preferences for faces from
own- or other-ethnic groups. Following from the results on gender preference (Quinn et al.,
2002), we hypothesized that 3-month-olds would demonstrate a preference for faces from their
own ethnic group based on predominant exposure to same-race faces from birth.
Experiment 1
Participants
In Experiment 1, Caucasian newborn infants viewed pairs of faces from a range of ethnic groups
using a VP task. Newborn infants were recruited and tested in the Royal Hallamshire Hospital,
Sheffield, UK. In total, 64 full-term healthy newborns (36 females) aged 16-120 hours (M =
69 hours, SD = 29.78) were included in the final sample. A further 26 newborns were excluded
from the final sample due to side bias (n = 4), fussiness (n = 8) or falling asleep (n = 14). All
newborns were randomly assigned to one of the four ethnic pairing conditions, with 16 in each
condition. Because infants participated in only one condition, they were exposed to the same
number of own- and other-race faces. This feature of the experimental design prevented a
potential within-experiment familiarity preference from developing across trials.
Stimuli
The stimuli were 32 color images (Fig. 1) of male and female adult faces (age range 25-29)
from four distinct ethnic groups (Caucasian, Middle Eastern, Asian and African) which were
paired as follows: African/Caucasian; Middle Eastern/ Caucasian; Asian/Caucasian; and
Caucasian/Caucasian. All pictures were taken with a Canon S50 digital camera. Using
Photoshop (Adobe Systems, San Jose, CA), all faces were cropped to remove the neck and
background detail from the original image. They were then mounted on a uniform dark grey
background. All stimuli were resized identically to ensure uniformity. Faces were rated on a
scale of 1-10 for attractiveness and distinctiveness by 16 independent observers and
subsequently paired to equate for gender, attractiveness and distinctiveness.
Luminosity was measured with a Sekonic Dualsport F 1-778 Lightmeter and contrast
differences between faces from different ethnic groups calculated using the Michelson Contrast
(C = (Lmax Lmin)/(Lmax + Lmin)). Three separate luminosity readings were recorded, averaged
for each face and then for each ethnicity. The average luminosity for the respective groups
was: African (10.19 cd/m2), Middle Eastern (14 cd/m2), Asian (16.92 cd/m2) and Caucasian
(16.81 cd/m2). The contrast difference between ethnic groups was calculated as: African vs.
Caucasian (L = 0.25), Middle Eastern vs. Caucasian (L = 0.09), Asian vs. Caucasian (L =
0.003).
Procedure
Newborns were tested in a quiet room, seated in a semi-upright position in a padded infant car
chair which was secured to a table, limiting movement and ensuring safety, approximately 30
cm from a screen (measuring 45 cm × 30 cm) onto which the paired images were projected.
They were randomly assigned to one of the four ethnic pairing conditions, with 16 in each
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condition. Each newborn was shown two face pairings, one male and one female. The
presentation of slides was counterbalanced for gender and left/right positioning of images
across trials. Eye movements were recorded and the film digitized to be analyzed frame by
frame by two independent observers on a computer using specialized software. The average
level of inter-observer agreement was high (Pearson r = .87).
When projected onto the screen all images measured 18 cm × 18 cm (14° visual angle) and
were positioned side-by-side separated with a 9-cm gap. Each pair of images was displayed
until 10 seconds of fixation time had elapsed. If the newborn spent 10 seconds looking away
from the projected images, the trial was terminated. Between each image pairing, a blank screen
was presented for 5 seconds or until the newborn moved their eyes from the final point of
fixation from the previous trial. A black and white CCD camera (specialized for low light
conditions) was used to film the neonate's eye movements. This was displayed to the
experimenters, during recording, on an ITC control monitor. Time was recorded and displayed
on the control monitor using a Horita II (TG-50) at 25 frames per second.
Results
Preliminary examination of the data revealed no significant effects of gender on looking times,
so data were combined for further analysis. A paired samples two-tailed t-test conducted on
the total time spent looking at Caucasian vs. other-race faces yielded a non-significant result
(t = .036, df = 47, p = ns). Observation of the overall mean percentage of looking time verifies
that newborns attended equally to both the Caucasian (49.73%) and the other-race faces
(50.27%). The overall null preference was represented within each of the three ethnicity
conditions: African (49.02%) vs. Caucasian (50.98%); Middle Eastern (49.83%) vs. Caucasian
(50.17%); Asian (51.66%) vs. Caucasian (48.34%), with no comparison approaching
significance. Newborns also displayed a null preference in the Caucasian (49.04%) vs.
Caucasian (50.96%) condition.
Discussion
Overall the results obtained in Experiment 1 suggest that at birth, newborns display no
spontaneous preferences for faces from own- or other-ethnic groups. Although null results can
be difficult to interpret, it is unlikely that these results are due to an inability to differentiate
between faces from different ethnic groups, given that newborns discriminate between faces
from within their own ethnic group (Pascalis & de Schonen, 1994). The most likely account
is that newborns are able to discriminate between faces from different ethnic groups, but no
group elicits a greater attraction.
Experiment 2
In Experiment 2, Caucasian 3-month-old infants were tested in an identical manner to
Experiment 1. It was predicted that the infants would demonstrate a familiarity preference for
Caucasian faces over other-race faces on the basis of greater experience with same-race faces.
Infants should demonstrate a null preference in the Caucasian/Caucasian condition.
Participants
Participants were 3-month-old infants who had been recruited from the Royal Hallamshire
Hospital, Sheffield, UK. In total, 64 full-term 3-month-old infants (42 females) of normal birth
weight were included in the final sample. A further 18 infants were excluded due to side bias
(n = 16) or fussiness (n = 2). All mothers reported that their baby had received little or no
contact with people from non-Caucasian ethnic groups.
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Stimuli
The stimuli used were identical to those of Experiment 1.
Procedure
Three-month-old infants were tested in a quiet room in the Department of Psychology at the
University of Sheffield, UK. Infants were seated on their mother's lap approximately 60 cm
away (due to improved visual acuity compared to newborns, a greater viewing distance is
appropriate for 3-month-old infants) from a screen onto which the images were projected.
Infants were randomly assigned to one of the same four ethnic pairing conditions that were
used in the first experiment, and the procedure for testing was identical to that of Experiment
1. All mothers were instructed to fixate centrally above the screen and to remain quiet during
testing. Eye movements were recorded and the film was then digitized to be analyzed frame
by frame by two independent observers on a computer using specialized software. The average
level of inter-observer agreement was high (Pearson r = .90).
Results
Preliminary examination once more revealed no significant gender differences, so the data
were combined for further analysis. A paired-samples two-tailed t-test conducted on the total
time spent looking at Caucasian vs. other-race faces yielded a highly significant result: overall,
the infants attended more to Caucasian than other-race faces (58.80% and 41.20%, respectively,
t = 4.179, df = 47, p < .0001). To investigate whether the Caucasian preference was represented
within each of the three ethnicity conditions, further t-tests were conducted. Paired samples
two-tailed t-tests yielded significant preferences in all conditions: African/Caucasian (39.67%
and 60.33%; t = 2.621, df = 15, p < .02), Middle Eastern/Caucasian (41.77% and 58.23%; t =
2.163, df = 15, p < .05), Asian/Caucasian (42.16% and 57.84%; t = 2.454, df = 15, p < .03). In
addition, the infants displayed a null preference in the Caucasian vs. Caucasian condition
(looking times of 51.46% and 48.54%, respectively, t = .402, df = 15, p = ns).
Discussion
The results from Experiment 2 indicate that the facial input received by infants during the first
3 months of postnatal life is sufficient to induce a visual preference for own-race faces. This
preference can be interpreted in terms of the infant face prototype becoming tuned to ‘own-
race’ following principal exposure to own-race faces from the visual environment and is
consistent with the finding that 3-month-olds, but not 1-month-olds, are able to form a
prototype from faces experienced in their visual environment (de Haan, Johnson, Maurer &
Perrett, 2001). The effect of differential experience on face-race preference is also consistent
with the finding that 3-month-old infants demonstrate a preference for faces matching the
gender of their primary caregiver (Quinn et al., 2002).
General discussion
Overall, the results from Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that preferential selectivity based
on ethnic differences is not present in the first days of life, but is learned within the first 3
months of life. The findings in turn imply that adults' perceptions of ethnic differences are
learned and derived from differences in exposure to own- versus other-race faces during early
development. Also, in concordance with earlier findings (Quinn et al., 2002; Pascalis et al.,
2002; Pascalis et al., 2005), the current data support the notion of a broad and unspecified face
processing system at birth that becomes tuned through facial input at a very early stage in life.
While it may be correct that in adulthood, ethnicity represents more than just an observation
of physical differences (Hirschfeld, 1998), we maintain that a conception of ethnicity is
founded in the sensitivity to ethnic physical differences in infancy.
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While the preference for own-race faces observed in 3-month-olds may be evident, it is unclear
which facial component (i.e. skin color, physiognomy, or both) is responsible for the effect.
Although there was a clear contrast difference between the African vs. Caucasian faces (C =
0.25), the difference between the Middle Eastern vs. Caucasian faces (C = 0.09) was minimal,
and the Asian vs. Caucasian face difference (C = 0.003) was almost indistinguishable. Despite
these differences, the preference observed for own-race faces was similar across conditions.
Clearly, in terms of physiognomy, there are marked differences between faces across all
different ethnic groups and our findings suggest that 3-month-old infants can discriminate
between faces from different ethnic groups on the basis of physiognomic differences alone.
Although our primary objective was to investigate the origins of categorization based on
ethnicity, our secondary objective was to look for a possible mechanism by which the ORE
may arise. We propose that the emergence of the ORE is caused by two interrelated
mechanisms. First, early predominant exposure to own-race faces tunes one's facial prototype
towards own-race dimensions. Second, the tuning of the face prototype to one's own race
actuates a preference to look toward familiar, own-race faces.
It is interesting to consider the relation between the data reported here and the outcomes
reported in Sangrigoli and de Schonen (2004). Whereas our findings show that Caucasian 3-
month-old infants spontaneously prefer Caucasian over other-race faces, Sangrigoli and de
Schonen's (2004) results demonstrate that when familiarized with a single face and tested with
the familiar face versus a novel face, same-aged Caucasian infants display a novelty preference,
but only when the familiar and novel faces are Caucasian. When the familiar-novel face
pairings are from another race, infants divide attention between the faces. It is possible that the
outcomes of the two studies bear a complementary relationship to each other if viewed from
a perceptual-expertise framework (Gauthier & Nelson, 2001; Quinn et al., 2002). That is, our
own findings suggest that greater experience with faces from one's own race leads infants to
display greater visual attention to such faces. This greater visual attention may in turn make it
more likely that infants will process the exemplar-specific details of faces that define them as
individual instances. Processing of the faces as individual exemplars would of course increase
the likelihood of successful performance in a recognition memory task of the sort reported by
Sangrigoli and de Schonen (2004). The lesser visual attention deployed for faces from other
races may make it more likely that these faces would be processed only at the category level
(i.e. African, Asian, Middle Eastern), and not at the more specific exemplar level (Levin,
1996, 2000). Processing the faces only in terms of their ethnic category would lead to null
outcomes in a recognition memory task as reported by Sangrigoli and de Schonen (2004). By
this accounting, the findings reported here may provide a basis for the data reported in
Sangrigoli and de Schonen (2004).
One limitation of the current study as well as that of Sangrigoli and de Schonen (2004) is that
only Caucasian participants were tested. It will thus be necessary to extend the results of both
studies to infants from other ethnic groups to assess whether these findings can be generalized
across all ethnic groups.
To summarize, this study has provided the first direct evidence in support of an ethnically
unspecified face processing system at birth, which can become tuned to certain facial
dimensions that specify race within the first 3 months of life. We believe that preference for
own-race faces observed in 3-month-olds represents the perceptual beginnings of
categorization based on ethnic differences and may provide a basis for the ‘other-race effect’.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by NIH grant HD46526-01 and an ESRC studentship awarded to David Kelly.
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Figure 1.
Sample stimuli.
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... Ils ont en effet montré que des nourrissons de 3 mois exposés principalement au visage de leur mère, préfèrent regarder un visage féminin inconnu plutôt qu'un visage masculin (Quinn, Yahr, Kuhn, Slater & Pascalis, 2002). On observe également à l'âge de 3 mois une forte préférence pour les visages du même type que celui de leurs parents par rapport à d'autres groupes ethniques non présents dans l'environnement visuel du nourrisson (Kelly et al., 2005). Il a été démontré chez l'adulte que la reconnaissance des visages de son propre groupe ethnique est facilitée par rapport aux visages des autres groupes, ce qui est connu comme l'Own-Race Effect (ORB) (Meissner & Brigham, 2001 ;Sangrigoli & De Schonen, 2004). ...
... A similar process occurs in processing own-and other-race faces for infants raised in a racially homogenous environment, but not in infants who experience regular exposure to multiple race faces (Bar-Haim et al., 2006). Daily experience in a racially homogenous environment leads to an increased sensitivity to own-race faces and a decreased sensitivity to other-race faces, which results in an advantage for processing own-race faces at an individual level in comparison to other-race faces by 9 months of age (Kelly et al., 2005(Kelly et al., , 2007Mauer & Werker, 2014;. This advantage for processing own-race faces has been referred to as the own-race advantage. ...
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Past research has shown that infants raised in a racially homogenous environment demonstrate an advantage for processing own-race faces at the individual level in comparison to other-race faces (Lewkowicz, 2014; Mauer & Werker, 2014; Quinn, Lee, & Pascalis, 2018). This advantage for processing own-race faces develops across infancy and has been referred to as the own-race bias (e.g., Anzures, Quinn, Pascalis, Slater, Tanaka, & Lee, 2013). The processes that lead to development of the own-race bias are complex and not fully understood. Recent work suggests that by 10 months of age, differences in own- and other-race face processing may be related to attentional processes (Roth & Reynolds, 2022). The current study utilized event-related potentials (ERP) to examine neural correlates of infant attention during initial exposure to own- or other-race faces. Level of attentional engagement was also compared across early to late trials to determine whether infants demonstrated increased or decreased attention to a face with repeated exposure depending on race. Twenty-three infants were tested at 10 months of age. Only infants raised in a racially homogenous environment (based on parental report) were included in the dataset. Participants were familiarized with 20 repeated 1000 ms presentations of a single exemplar of either an own-race face (n = 13) or an other-race face (n = 10). Following familiarization, presentations of the familiar face were interspersed with presentations of novel faces until the infant was off task. EEG was recorded throughout testing using the EGI Geodesic EEG System (GES 400) 128-channel system with a 1000 Hz sampling rate. An offline bandpass filter was applied from 0.10 to 30.00 Hz. The analysis of the EEG focused on the Nc ERP component associated with level of attentional engagement in infancy (Reynolds & Richards, 2005). Mean amplitude of the Nc component was analyzed at midline-frontal electrodes from 345-650 ms following stimulus onset using a 200 ms prestimulus baseline period. Participants contributed a minimum of 8 artifact-free trials per condition to the ERP averages. Infants familiarized with an other-race face demonstrated greater amplitude Nc in comparison to infants familiarized with an own-race face (F(1,21) = 4.65, p = 0.037, ηp2 = .191). Interestingly, infants showed increased Nc amplitude to other-race faces following familiarization and decreased Nc amplitude to own-race faces following familiarization. These findings indicate that 10-month-old infants demonstrate greater attentional engagement during initial exposure to other-race faces than during initial exposure to own-race faces. This greater amplitude Nc could reflect a novelty effect for other-race faces for infants raised in racially homogenous environments. The increase in Nc amplitude following familiarization with an other-race face may be indicative of continued attentional engagement due to incomplete processing of the face. Given the potential for early developing perceptual biases to contribute to subsequent development of social biases and prejudice (Xiao et al., 2018, 2019), these findings provide important insight into potential mechanisms associated with the own-race bias in face processing in infancy.
... En un estudio influyente que medía los tiempos de mirada, los recién nacidos no mostraron preferencias entre rostros de su misma raza y rostros de otras razas. Por su parte, los niños caucásicos de tres meses expuestos únicamente a miembros de su propia raza mostraron preferencias por rostros de su misma raza frente a los rostros de razas distintas (Kelly et al., 2005). Este estudio sugiere que hay algo especial en la forma en que los niños perciben a la gente, dado que generalmente prefieren observar un estímulo nuevo antes que uno familiar. ...
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To answer tantalizing questions such as whether animals are moral or how morality evolved, I propose starting with a somewhat less fraught question: do animals have normative cognition? Recent psychological research suggests that normative thinking, or ought-thought, begins early in human development. Recent philosophical research suggests that folk psychology is grounded in normative thought. Recent primatology research finds evidence of sophisticated cultural and social learning capacities in great apes. Drawing on these three literatures, I argue that the human variety of social cognition and moral cognition encompass the same cognitive capacities and that the nonhuman great apes may also be normative beings. To make this argument, I develop an account of animal social norms that shares key properties with Cristina Bicchieri’s account of social norms but which lowers the cognitive requirements for having a social norm. I propose a set of four early developing prerequisites implicated in social cognition that make up what I call naïve normativity: (1) the ability to identify agents, (2) sensitivity to in-group/out-group differences, (3) the capacity for social learning of group traditions, and (4) responsiveness to appropriateness. I review the ape cognition literature and present preliminary empirical evidence supporting the existence of social norms and nave normativity in great apes. While there is more empirical work to be done, I hope to have offered a framework for studying normativity in other species, and I conclude that we should be open to the possibility that normative cognition is yet another ancient cognitive endowment that is not human-unique. Originally published as: Andrews, K. (2020). Naïve Normativity: The Social Foundation of Moral Cognition. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 6(1), 36-56. https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2019.30
... Previous research on children's social group and empathy for pain is limited, but existing studies suggest that children's preference for their social group develops with age and appears early in life. Infants prefer to observe and interact with people who are of the same race, language and preferences [26][27][28]. Children of preschool age also demonstrate in-group favoritism. Five-year-old children exhibit more positive evaluations of in-group members [29] and tend to select in-group members as friends or playmates [30]. ...
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Background/Objectives: Empathy for pain enhances our ability to perceive pain and recognize potential dangers. Empathic bias occurs when members of the in-group evoke more intense empathic responses compared to out-group members. In the process of interacting with peers, children develop peer status and spontaneously form peer groups. The present study examined how peer status affects pain empathy in mid-childhood individuals. Methods: A behavior and an event-related potential (ERP) study were conducted. Participants were exposed to pictures of different peers in painful or non-painful situations and completed the pain and unpleasantness rating tasks. Four types of peers were included: popular, rejected, neglected and unfamiliar peers. Results: The behavioral results suggested that the influence of peer status on cognitive empathy is more salient, and the empathic response to unfamiliar peers is higher than neglecting and rejecting peers. The ERP results indicated that larger P3 and LPP amplitude were observed in the painful stimulus condition than in the non-painful stimulus condition. The findings also showed that the popular peers elicited larger LPP amplitude than other peers. The LPP response to unfamiliar peers was larger than to neglected peers. Conclusions: All these results demonstrated that mid-childhood individuals showed empathic bias to in-group members, but it was influenced by peer status in the cognitive processes of pain empathy.
... Although we are not aware of any studies examining children's race-based preferences for learning science or other topics, there is evidence supporting that children are sensitive to race when evaluating other people. Children as young as 3 months demonstrate ingroup preferences based on race (Kelly et al., 2005). By age 6, White children also show a clear preference for White children and adults over members of other races Dunham et al., 2013;Rizzo et al., 2022). ...
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Children are sensitive to other’s knowledge and social characteristics when seeking out information, but little is known about how adults’ gender and race interact to influence children’s beliefs about adults’ knowledge. In two studies, 5–8-year-olds (N = 257; 127 girls; 130 boys; 73% White) saw photos of Black and White men and women and rated each adults’ science knowledge. In Study 1, children then viewed four adult faces together (one from each gender and race) and chose who knew the most and second-most about the answer to a scientific question. In Study 2, the selection task was modified so that children saw two faces from different categories and chose one, and children were then asked to identify one of four individuals as a scientist. In both studies, children also chose which of four individuals they would want to learn about science from. Children gave similar knowledge ratings to men and women and to Black and White individuals when they rated one adult at a time. However, when children selected the most knowledgeable adult, they showed an ingroup gender-based preference whose strength varied with child age. In both studies, children also showed an ingroup gender-based learning preference, but showed no preferences based on adult race. Children referred to adults’ appearance most often when justifying their learning preference and which individual they believed to be a scientist. Together, these findings suggest that, for primarily White American children, a potential adult informant’s gender may be more salient than race when evaluating science knowledge.
Chapter
Traditionally, social issues such as death, poverty, and racism have been considered delicate and uncomfortable topics for interactions between children and adults. However, children often share their knowledge and experiences with these issues, which adults may feel challenged to address. The global COVID-19 pandemic has heightened our awareness of race and racism, and many children have observed, overheard, or experienced racism toward marginalized groups. Several recent hate crimes against Asians and Asian Americans have traumatized Asian American families. This chapter introduces a case study on what Asian American children have shared and discussed at home regarding racism against Asians and Asian Americans during the pandemic. From the intersectional positions of an Asian American mother, researcher, and teacher educator, the author navigates children’s voices on race and racism against Asian Americans and describes the silence on race and racism in schools, which can lead to further marginalization of Asian and Asian American children. This chapter also provides insight into theoretical and pedagogical stances for early childhood educators to support and address anti-racism in terms of anti-discriminatory education.
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Race in the Making provides a new understanding of how people conceptualize social categories and shows why this knowledge is so readily recruited to create and maintain systems of unequal power. Hirschfeld argues that knowledge of race is not derived from observations of physical difference nor does it develop in the same way as knowledge of other social categories. Instead, his central claim is that racial thinking is the product of a special-purpose cognitive competence for understanding and representing human kinds. The book also challenges the conventional wisdom that race is purely a social construction by demonstrating that a common set of abstract principles underlies all systems of racial thinking, whatever other historical and cultural specificities may be associated with them. Starting from the commonplace observation that race is a category of both power and the mind, Race in the Making directly tackles this issue. Through a sustained exploration of continuity and change in the child's notion of race and across historical variations in the race concept, Hirschfeld shows that a singular commonsense theory about human kinds constrains the way racial thinking changes, whether in historical time or during childhood. After surveying the literature on the development of a cultural psychology of race, Hirschfeld presents original studies that examine children's (and occasionally adults') representations of race. He sketches how a jointly cultural and psychological approach to race might proceed, showing how this approach yields new insights into the emergence and elaboration of racial thinking. Bradford Books imprint
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The current article reviews the own-race bias (ORB) phenomenon in memory for human faces, the finding that own-race faces are better remembered when compared with memory for faces of another, less familiar race. Data were analyzed from 39 research articles, involving 91 independent samples and nearly 5,000 participants. Measures of hit and false alarm rates, and aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion were examined, including an analysis of 8 study moderators. Several theoretical relationships were also assessed (i.e., the influence of racial attitudes and interracial contact). Overall, results indicated a "mirror effect" pattern in which own-race faces yielded a higher proportion of hits and a lower proportion of false alarms compared with other-race faces. Consistent with this effect, a significant ORB was also found in aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion. The influence of perceptual learning and differentiation processes in the ORB are discussed, in addition to the practical implications of this phenomenon.
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Full-text available
The current article reviews the own-race bias (ORB) phenomenon in memory for human faces, the finding that own-race faces are better remembered when compared with memory for faces of another, less familiar race. Data were analyzed from 39 research articles, involving 91 independent samples and nearly 5,000 participants. Measures of hit and false alarm rates, and aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion were examined, including an analysis of 8 study moderators. Several theoretical relationships were also assessed (i.e., the influence of racial attitudes and interracial contact). Overall, results indicated a "mirror effect" pattern in which own-race faces yielded a higher proportion of hits and a lower proportion of false alarms compared with other-race faces. Consistent with this effect, a significant ORB was also found in aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion. The influence of perceptual learning and differentiation processes in the ORB are discussed, in addition to the practical implications of this phenomenon. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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This article explored the finding that cross-race (CR) faces are more quickly classified by race than same race (SR) faces. T. Valentine and modeled this effect by assuming that face categories can be explained on the basis of node activations in a multidimensional exemplar space. Therefore, variations in exemplar density between and within face categories explain both facilitated classification of CR faces and the relationship between typicality and classification RT within face categories. The present findings from classification and visual search tasks suggest that speeded classification of CR faces is instead caused by a quickly coded race feature that marks CR but not SR faces. Also, systematic manipulations of facial typicality cause no variation in classifiability aside from slowed classification of very distinctive faces. These results suggest that the exemplar model cannot explain important aspects of face classification.
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Proposes a scenario on hemispheric specialization for physiognomy recognition and processing. This scenario considers whether functional hemispheric asymmetry results from interactions between endogenous factors regulating the maturational rates of neuronal sets involved in visual pattern processing, or from regular events and features encountered in the environment (experiental factors). It is suggested that the temporal relationships between the 2 sets of events (endogenous and experiental) are a factor contributing to the shaping of the functional hemispheric asymmetry observed in adult face processing recognition. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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Infants between 12 and 21 days of age can imitate both facial and manual gestures; this behavior cannot be explained in terms of either conditioning or innate releasing mechanisms. Such imitation implies that human neonates can equate their own unseen behaviors with gestures they see others perform.
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Several previous experiments have found that newborn and young infants will spend more time looking at attractive faces when these are shown paired with faces judged by adults to be unattractive. Two experimental conditions are described with the aim of finding whether the “attractiveness effect” results from attention to internal or external facial features, or both. Pairs of attractive and less attractive faces (as judged by adults) were shown to newborn infants (mean age 2 days, 9 hours), where each pair had either identical internal features (and different external features) or identical external features (and different internal features). In the latter, but not the former, condition the infants looked longer at the attractive faces. These findings are clear evidence that newborn infants use information about internal facial features in making preferences based on attractiveness. It is suggested that when newborn (and older) infants are presented with facial stimuli, whether dynamic or static, they are able to attend both to internal and external facial features.