Experience with headwear influences the other-race effect in 4-year-old children.
The other-race effect (ORE) implies the better recognition of faces of one's own race compared with faces of a different race. It demonstrates that face recognition is shaped by daily experience with human faces. Such experience mainly includes structural information of own-race faces and also information on the way faces are usually seen, as a whole or partly covered by scarves or other headwear. In two experiments, we investigated how this mode of presentation is related to the occurrence of the ORE during childhood. In Experiment 1, 4-year-old German children (N = 104), accustomed to seeing faces without headwear in daily life, were asked to recognize female Caucasian or African faces, presented either as a whole or wearing a woolen hat, in a forced choice paradigm. In Experiment 2, 4-year-olds from rural Cameroon (N = 70), accustomed to seeing faces with and without headwear in daily life, participated in the same task. In both groups, the ORE was present in the familiar mode of presentation, that is, in whole faces in German children and in whole and partly covered faces in Cameroonian children. The results are discussed in relation to the role of experience for face recognition processes.
Department of Developmental Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, 35394 Giessen, Germany. Electronic address: janina.suhrke@psychol.uni-giessen.de.
Janina
J
Suhrke
Department of Developmental Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, 35394 Giessen, Germany.
Claudia
C
Freitag
University of Osnabrueck, 49074 Osnabrueck, Germany.
Bettina
B
Lamm
University of Osnabrueck, 49074 Osnabrueck, Germany.
Johanna
J
Teiser
Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, 60629 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Sonja
S
Poloczek
University of Bielefeld, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
Ina
I
Fassbender
University of Bielefeld, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
Manuel
M
Teubert
Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, 60629 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Isabel
I
Voehringer
University of Osnabrueck, 49074 Osnabrueck, Germany.
Heidi
H
Keller
Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main, 60629 Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Monika
M
Knopf
University of Bielefeld, 33615 Bielefeld, Germany.
Arnold
A
Lohaus
Department of Developmental Psychology, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, 35394 Giessen, Germany.
Gudrun
G
Schwarzer
D002163:Cameroon; D002657:Child Development / Q000502:physiology*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D000066499:Facial Recognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D044469:Racial Groups / Q000523:psychology*
African faces; Caucasian faces; Children; Experience; Face recognition; Internal and external facial features; Other-race effect