title: The other-race effect in 3-year-old German and Cameroonian children.
abstract: Recognizing individual faces is an important human ability that highly depends on experience. This is reflected in the so called other-race effect; adults are better at recognizing faces from their own ethnic group, while very young infants do not show this specialization yet. Two experiments examined whether 3-year-old children from two different cultural backgrounds show the other-race effect. In Experiment 1, German children (N = 41) were presented with a forced choice paradigm where they were asked to recognize female Caucasian or African faces. In Experiment 2, 3-year-olds from Cameroon (N = 66) participated in a similar task using the same stimulus material. In both cultures the other-race effect was present; children were better at recognizing individual faces from their own ethnic group. In addition, German children performed at a higher overall level of accuracy than Cameroonians. The results are discussed in relation to cultural aspects in particular.
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Janina
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Suhrke
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Claudia
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Freitag
authors.affiliation: University of Osnabrueck Osnabrueck, Germany.
authors.forename: Bettina
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Lamm
authors.affiliation: University of Osnabrueck Osnabrueck, Germany.
authors.forename: Johanna
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Teiser
authors.affiliation: University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany.
authors.forename: Ina
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Fassbender
authors.affiliation: Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main Germany.
authors.forename: Sonja
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Poloczek
authors.affiliation: University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Teubert
authors.affiliation: Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main Germany.
authors.forename: Isabel A
authors.initials: IA
authors.lastname: Vöhringer
authors.affiliation: University of Osnabrueck Osnabrueck, Germany.
authors.forename: Heidi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.affiliation: Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main Germany.
authors.forename: Monika
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Knopf
authors.affiliation: University of Bielefeld Bielefeld, Germany.
authors.forename: Arnold
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lohaus
authors.affiliation: Department of Developmental Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen Giessen, Germany.
authors.forename: Gudrun
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Schwarzer
keywords: Cameroon; Germany; children; face recognition; other-race effect