The other-race effect on the McGurk effect in infancy

Abstract

This study investigated the difference in the McGurk effect between own-race-face and other-race-face stimuli among Japanese infants from 5 to 9 months of age. The McGurk effect results from infants using information from a speaker's face in audiovisual speech integration. We hypothesized that the McGurk effect varies with the speaker's race because of the other-race effect, which indicates an advantage for own-race faces in our face processing system. Experiment 1 demonstrated the other-race effect on audiovisual speech integration such that the infants ages 5-6 months and 8-9 months are likely to perceive the McGurk effect when observing an own-race-face speaker, but not when observing an other-race-face speaker. Experiment 2 found the other-race effect on audiovisual speech integration regardless of irrelevant speech identity cues. Experiment 3 confirmed the infants' ability to differentiate two auditory syllables. These results showed that infants are likely to integrate voice with an own-race-face, but not with an other-race-face. This implies the role of experiences with own-race-faces in the development of audiovisual speech integration. Our findings also contribute to the discussion of whether perceptual narrowing is a modality-general, pan-sensory process.

Keywords: Development; Multisensory processing.

Fig. 1

An example of the stimulus procedure. In the test phase, the order of presentation of the test trials (novel and familiarized) was randomly counterbalanced across the infants

Fig. 2

Mean total fixation times during the test phase of two familiarization conditions: in 5–6-month-olds (a) and in 8–9-month-olds (b). Dark-gray bars represent the results for the novel trial (the presentation of auditory /pa/ with vegetable images), and light-gray bars indicate the results for the familiarized trials (the presentation of auditory /ta/ with vegetable images). The error bars represent ± 1 standard error of the mean. Asterisks indicate the significance level of the statistical differences: *p < .05

Fig. 3

Mean total fixation times during the test phase of two familiarization conditions: in 5–6-month-olds (a) and in 8–9-month-olds (b). Dark-gray bars represent the results for the novel trials (the presentation of auditory /pa/ with vegetable images), and light-gray bars the results for the familiarized trials (the presentation of auditory /ta/ with vegetable images). The error bars represent ± 1 standard error of the mean. Asterisks indicate the significance level of the statistical differences: *p < .05

Fig. 4

Mean total fixation times during the test phase of two familiarization conditions: in 5–6-month-olds (a) and in 8–9-month-olds (b). Dark-grey bars represent the results for the familiarized trials (the presentation of auditory /pa/ with vegetable images), and light-grey bars the novel trials (the presentation of auditory /ta/ with vegetable images). The error bars represent ± 1 standard error of the mean. Asterisks indicate the significance level of the statistical differences: *p < .05