title: The development of race-based perceptual categorization: skin color dominates early category judgments.
abstract: Prior research on the development of race-based categorization has concluded that children understand the perceptual basis of race categories from as early as age 4 (e.g. Aboud, 1988). However, such work has rarely separated the influence of skin color from other physiognomic features considered by adults to be diagnostic of race categories. In two studies focusing on Black-White race categorization judgments in children between the ages of 4 and 9, as well as in adults, we find that categorization decisions in early childhood are determined almost entirely by attention to skin color, with attention to other physiognomic features exerting only a small influence on judgments as late as middle childhood. We further find that when skin color cues are largely eliminated from the stimuli, adults readily shift almost entirely to focus on other physiognomic features. However, 6- and 8-year-old children show only a limited ability to shift attention to facial physiognomy and so perform poorly on the task. These results demonstrate that attention to 'race' in younger children is better conceptualized as attention to skin color, inviting a reinterpretation of past work focusing on children's race-related cognition.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University, USA.
authors.forename: Yarrow
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dunham
authors.forename: Elena V
authors.initials: EV
authors.lastname: Stepanova
authors.forename: Ron
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Dotsch
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Todorov
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American; D000367:Age Factors; D001288:Attention; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D003657:Decision Making; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual / Q000502:physiology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D044469:Racial Groups; D021641:Recognition, Psychology; D012880:Skin Pigmentation; D044465:White People; D055815:Young Adult