Abstract
In this study, we examined developmental changes in infants' processing of own- versus other-race faces. Caucasian American 8-month-olds (Experiment 1) and 4-month-olds (Experiment 2) were tested in a habituation-switch procedure designed to assess holistic (attending to the relationship between internal and external features of the face) versus featural (attending to individual features of the face) processing of faces. Eight-month-olds demonstrated holistic processing of upright own-race (Caucasian) faces, but featural processing of upright other-race (African) faces. Inverted faces were processed featurally, regardless of ethnicity. Four-month-olds, however, demonstrated holistic processing of both Caucasian and African upright faces. These results demonstrate that infants' processing of own- versus other-race faces becomes specialized between 4 and 8 months.
Notes
1A planned comparison of 8-month-old infants' mean transformed looking times to the familiar versus novel-ethnicity face revealed only a main effect of trial, F(1, 53) = 16.33, p = .001, ηp = .24, indicating that infants looked longer at the novel-ethnicity face than at the familiar face, regardless of face ethnicity or orientation condition.
2A planned comparison of 4-month-old infants' mean transformed looking times to the familiar versus novel-ethnicity face revealed only a main effect of trial, F(1, 22) = 44.25, p = .001, ηp = .67, indicating that infants looked longer at the novel-ethnicity face than at the familiar face, regardless of face ethnicity condition.