Nature and nurture in own-race face processing.
A standard visual preference task was used to examine 3-month-olds' looking times at own-race versus other-race faces as a function of environmental exposure to faces from the two categories. Participants were Caucasian infants living in a Caucasian environment, African infants living in an African environment, and African infants living in a predominantly Caucasian environment. The results indicate that preference for own-race faces is present as early as 3 months of age, but that this preference results from exposure to the prototypical facial environment.
Bar-Haim
Yair
Y
Department of Psychology, Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. yair1@post.tau.ac.il
Ziv
Talee
T
Lamy
Dominique
D
Hodes
Richard M
RM
D003071:Cognition; D005006:Ethnicity; D005145:Face; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D012931:Social Environment; D014796:Visual Perception