The other-race effect in children from a multiracial population: A cross-cultural comparison.

The role of experience with other-race faces in the development of the other-race effect was investigated through a cross-cultural comparison between 5- and 6-year-olds and 13- and 14-year-olds raised in a monoracial (British White, n=83) population and a multiracial (Malaysian Chinese, n=68) population. British White children showed an other-race effect to three other-race faces (Chinese, Malay, and African Black) that was stable across age. Malaysian Chinese children showed a recognition deficit for less experienced faces (African Black) but showed a recognition advantage for faces of which they have direct or indirect experience. Interestingly, younger (Malaysian Chinese) children showed no other-race effect for female faces such that they can recognize all female faces regardless of race. These findings point to the importance of early race and gender experiences in reorganizing the face representation to accommodate changes in experience across development.

In infancy the timing of emergence of the other-race effect is dependent on face gender.

Poorer recognition of other-race faces relative to own-race faces is well documented from late infancy to adulthood. Research has revealed an increase in the other-race effect (ORE) during the first year of life, but there is some disagreement regarding the age at which it emerges. Using cropped faces to eliminate discrimination based on external features, visual paired comparison and spontaneous visual preference measures were used to investigate the relationship between ORE and face gender at 3-4 and 8-9 months. Caucasian-White 3- to 4-month-olds' discrimination of Chinese, Malay, and Caucasian-White faces showed an own-race advantage for female faces alone whereas at 8-9 months the own-race advantage was general across gender. This developmental effect is accompanied by a preference for female over male faces at 4 months and no gender preference at 9 months. The pattern of recognition advantage and preference suggests that there is a shift from a female-based own-race recognition advantage to a general own-race recognition advantage, in keeping with a visual and social experience-based account of ORE.

The role of inner and outer face parts in holistic processing: a developmental study.

The effects of inner-outer feature interactions with unfamiliar faces were investigated in 6- and 10-year-old children and adults (20-30 years) to determine their contribution in holistic face vision. Participants completed a two-alternative forced-choice (2AFC) task under two conditions. The congruent condition used whole, inner-only, and outer-only stimuli. The incongruent condition used stimuli combining the inner features from one face with outer features from a novel face, or vice versa. Results yielded strong congruency effects which were moderated by pronounced feature-type asymmetries specific to developmental stage. Adults showed an inner-feature preference during congruent trials, but no asymmetry for incongruent trials. Children showed no asymmetry for congruent trials, but an outer-feature preference for incongruent trials. These findings concur with recent theoretical developments indicating that adults and children are likely to differ in the types of feature-specific information they preferentially encode in face perception, and that holistic effects are moderated differently in adults and children as a function of feature type.

Configurational information in face perception.

A new facial composites technique is demonstrated, in which photographs of the top and bottom halves of different familiar faces fuse to form unfamiliar faces when aligned with each other. The perception of a novel configuration in such composite stimuli is sufficiently convincing to interfere with identification of the constituent parts (experiment 1), but this effect disappears when stimuli are inverted (experiment 2). Difficulty in identifying the parts of upright composites is found even for stimuli made from parts of unfamiliar faces that have only ever been encountered as face fragments (experiment 3). An equivalent effect is found for composites made from internal and external facial features of well-known people (experiment 4). These findings demonstrate the importance of configurational information in face perception, and that configurations are only properly perceived in upright faces.

Hebb repetition effects in visual memory: the roles of verbal rehearsal and distinctiveness.

A version of the Hebb repetition task was used with faces to explore the generality of the effect in a nonverbal domain. In the baseline condition, a series of upright faces was presented, and participants were asked to reconstruct the original order. Performance in this condition was compared to another in which the same stimuli were accompanied by concurrent verbal rehearsal to examine whether Hebb learning is dependent on verbal processing. Baseline performance was also compared to a condition in which the same faces were presented inverted. This comparison was used to determine the importance in Hebb learning of being able to visually distinguish between the list items. The results produced classic serial position curves that were equivalent over conditions with Hebb repetition effects being in evidence only for upright faces and verbal suppression as having no effect. These findings are interpreted as posing a challenge to current models derived from verbal-domain data.

Serial position effects in short-term visual memory: a SIMPLE explanation?

A version of Sternberg's (1966) short-term visual memory recognition paradigm with pictures of unfamiliar faces as stimuli was used in three experiments to assess the applicability of the distinctiveness-based SIMPLE model proposed by Brown, Neath, and Chater (2002). Initial simulations indicated that the amount of recency predicted increased as the parameter measuring the psychological distinctiveness of the stimulus material (c) increased and that the amount of primacy was dependent on the extent of proactive interference from previously presented stimuli. The data from Experiment 1, in which memory lists of four and five faces varying in visual similarity were used, confirmed the predicted extended recency effect. However, changes in visual similarity were not found to produce changes in c. In Experiments 2 and 3, the conditions that influence the magnitude of c were explored. These revealed that both the familiarity of the stimulus class before testing and changes in familiarity, due to perceptual learning, influenced distinctiveness, as indexed by the parameter c. Overall, the empirical data from all three experiments were well fit by SIMPLE.

Serial position memory in the visual-spatial domain: reconstructing sequences of unfamiliar faces.

In two studies we presented pictures of unfamiliar faces one at a time, then presented the complete set at test and asked for serial reconstruction of the order of presentation. Serial position functions were similar to those found with verbal materials, with considerable primacy and one item recency, position errors that were mainly to the adjacent serial position, a visual similarity effect, and effects of articulatory suppression that did not interact with the serial position effect or with the similarity effect. Serial position effects were found when faces had been seen for as little as 300 ms and after a 6-s retention interval filled with articulatory suppression. Serial position effects found with unfamiliar faces are not based on verbal encoding strategies, and important elements of serial memory may be general across modalities.

Distinctiveness, typicality, and recollective experience in face recognition: a principal components analysis.

In this study, participants rated previously unseen faces on six dimensions: familiarity, distinctiveness, attractiveness, memorability, typicality, and resemblance to a familiar person. The faces were then presented again in a recognition test in which participants assigned their positive recognition decisions to either remember (R), know (K), or guess categories. On all dimensions except typicality, faces that were categorized as R responses were associated with significantly higher ratings than were faces categorized as K responses. Study ratings for R and K responses were then subjected to a principal components analysis. The factor loadings suggested that R responses were influenced primarily by the distinctiveness of faces, but K responses were influenced by moderate ratings on all six dimensions. These findings indicate that the structural features of a face influence the subjective experience of recognition.

Explicacoes maternas dos custos e beneficios de experiencias de vida apos separacao parental

Analises recentes tanto questionam a suposicao de que a separacao parental tem efeitos negativos sobre as familias quanto sugerem que deveria ser dada atencao a diversidade de experiencias apos o divorcio. Esta sugestao pode ser implementada combinando metodos e examinando diferentes niveis de experiencias individuais. Setenta e seis maes provenientes de familias separadas e casadas, com um de seus filhos possuindo 20 meses de idade, participaram de uma entrevista e responderam um questionario de eventos de vida. Os dados desses instrumentos foram, entao, comparados com uma serie de testes administrados a mae ou a crianca alvo. As maes separadas relataram mais eventos de vida recentes que as maes casadas e avaliaram alguns eventos mais negativamente e outros mais positivamente. A analise de regressao apontou como unico preditor significativo de experiencias positivas de vida, o status marital. Status marital e dificuldades na educacao e cuidados com a crianca predisseram experiencias negativas de vida. Os resultados sugerem um equilibrio sutil de desvantagens e ganhos apos a separacao, que precisam ser explorados antes que os padroes longitudinais de ajustamentos da familia e da crianca sejam completamente compreendidos.