Familiar other-race faces show normal holistic processing and are robust to perceptual stress.
Other-race individuals are remembered more poorly and receive less holistic/configural processing than same-race individuals, at least when faces are novel. Here, we examine the amelioration of these effects with familiarity, using distinctiveness-matched Caucasian and Asian stimulus sets. We confirmed a cross-race deficit for upright faces following a single encoding trial, which disappeared rapidly with practice on a small set of other-race 'friends' and did not re-emerge when perceptual processing was put under stress (presentation in the periphery). We also examined holistic/configural processing for familiarised faces using the peripheral inversion effect (McKone, 2004 Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 30 181 - 197). A test for faces and nonface objects (dogs) confirmed the validity of this technique as providing a direct measure of holistic processing; we then showed that, after 1 h of training, holistic processing was as strong for other-race as same-race faces. We conclude that practice with other-race individuals can rapidly engage normal face-processing mechanisms.
McKone
Elinor
E
School of Psychology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia. Elinor.McKone@anu.edu.au
Brewer
Jacqueline L
JL
MacPherson
Sarah
S
Rhodes
Gillian
G
Hayward
William G
WG
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D044466:Asian People / Q000523:psychology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D004285:Dogs; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008568:Memory; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology*