Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Clinical Trial
. 2010 Jul;13(4):553-64.
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00900.x.

Categorization, categorical perception, and asymmetry in infants' representation of face race

Gizelle Anzures  1 , Paul C Quinn, Olivier Pascalis, Alan M Slater, Kang Lee
Affiliations
Clinical Trial

Categorization, categorical perception, and asymmetry in infants' representation of face race

Gizelle Anzures et al. Dev Sci. 2010 Jul.

Abstract

The present study examined whether 6- and 9-month-old Caucasian infants could categorize faces according to race. In Experiment 1, infants were familiarized with different female faces from a common ethnic background (i.e. either Caucasian or Asian) and then tested with female faces from a novel race category. Nine-month-olds were able to form discrete categories of Caucasian and Asian faces. However, 6-month-olds did not form discrete categories of faces based on race. In Experiment 2, a second group of 6- and 9-month-olds was tested to determine whether they could discriminate between different faces from the same race category. Results showed that both age groups could only discriminate between different faces from the own-race category of Caucasian faces. The findings of the two experiments taken together suggest that 9-month-olds formed a category of Caucasian faces that are further differentiated at the individual level. In contrast, although they could form a category of Asian faces, they could not discriminate between such other-race faces. This asymmetry in category formation at 9 months (i.e. categorization of own-race faces vs. categorical perception of other-race faces) suggests that differential experience with own- and other-race faces plays an important role in infants' acquisition of face processing abilities.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Example of Condition A (Caucasian to Asian) stimuli (left: habituation trials; right: generalization and test trials).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Six-month-olds' percentage of looking at the familiarization faces, the novel exemplars from the familiar race category, and the novel race faces in Condition A (Caucasian to Asian) and Condition B (Asian to Caucasian) of the categorization task.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Nine-month-olds' percentage of looking at the familiarization faces, the novel exemplars from the familiar race category, and the novel race faces in Condition A (Caucasian to Asian) and Condition B (Asian to Caucasian) of the categorization task.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Six- and 9-month-olds' percentage of looking at the familiar face versus the novel face in the discrimination task. * indicates a significant difference in looking at the familiar vs. novel face.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Bar-Haim Y, Ziv T, Lamy D, Hodes RM. Nature and nurture in own-race face processing. Psychological Science. 2006;17:159–163. - PubMed
    1. Baron MJ, Wheatley J, Symons L, Hains CR, Lee K, Muir D. The Queen's Video Coder. Department of Psychology, Queen's University; Canada: 2001. http://psyc.queensu.ca/∼vidcoder.
    1. Behl-Chadha G. Basic-level and superordinate-like categorical representations in early infancy. Cognition. 1996;60:105–141. - PubMed
    1. Bomba PC, Siqueland ER. The nature and structure of infant form categories. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 1983;35:294–328.
    1. Bornstein MH, Arterberry ME. Recognition, discrimination, and categorization of smiling by 5-month-old infants. Developmental Science. 2003;6:585–599.

Publication types