title: Race-specific perceptual discrimination improvement following short individuation training with faces.
abstract: This study explores the effect of individuation training on the acquisition of race-specific expertise. First, we investigated whether practice individuating other-race faces yields improvement in perceptual discrimination for novel faces of that race. Second, we asked whether there was similar improvement for novel faces of a different race for which participants received equal practice, but in an orthogonal task that did not require individuation. Caucasian participants were trained to individuate faces of one race (African American or Hispanic) and to make difficult eye-luminance judgments on faces of the other race. By equating these tasks we are able to rule out raw experience, visual attention, or performance/success-induced positivity as the critical factors that produce race-specific improvements. These results indicate that individuation practice is one mechanism through which cognitive, perceptual, and/or social processes promote growth of the own-race face recognition advantage.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Vanderbilt University, PMB 407817, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN 37240-7817, USA. rankin.williams@vanderbilt.edu
authors.forename: Rankin W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: McGugin
authors.forename: James W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Tanaka
authors.forename: Sophie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Lebrecht
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Tarr
authors.forename: Isabel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Gauthier
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005145:Face; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011214:Practice, Psychological; D011597:Psychomotor Performance; D044469:Racial Groups; D011930:Reaction Time; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception