The development of norm-based coding and race-specific face prototypes: an examination of 5- and 8-year-olds' face space.
The current research investigated the organization of children's face space by examining whether 5- and 8-year-olds show race-contingent aftereffects. Participants read a storybook in which Caucasian and Chinese children's faces were distorted in opposite directions. Before and after adaptation, participants judged the normality/attractiveness of expanded, compressed, and undistorted Caucasian and Chinese faces. The method was validated with adults and then refined to test 8- and 5-year-olds. The 5-year-olds were also tested in a simple aftereffects paradigm. The current research provides the first evidence for simple attractiveness aftereffects in 5-year-olds and for race-contingent aftereffects in both 5- and 8-year-olds. Evidence that adults and 5-year-olds may possess only a weak prototype for Chinese children's faces suggests that Caucasian adults' prototype for Chinese adult faces does not generalize to child faces and that children's face space undergoes a period of increasing differentiation between 5 and 8 years of age.
Short
Lindsey A
LA
Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1.
Hatry
Alexandra J
AJ
Mondloch
Catherine J
CJ
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D044466:Asian People / Q000523:psychology*; D001504:Beauty; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D005795:Generalization, Stimulus; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D010469:Perceptual Distortion; D012016:Reference Values; D013240:Stereotyping; D044465:White People / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult