Caucasian Infants’ Attentional Orienting to Own- and Other-Race Faces

Abstract

Infants show preferential attention toward faces and detect faces embedded within complex naturalistic scenes. Newborn infants are insensitive to race, but rapidly develop differential processing of own- and other-race faces. In the present study, we investigated the development of attentional orienting toward own- and other-race faces embedded within naturalistic scenes. Infants aged six-, nine- and twelve-months did not show differences in the speed of orienting to own- and other race faces, but other-race faces held infants’ visual attention for longer. We also found a clear developmental progression in attentional capture and holding, with older infants orienting to faces faster and fixating them for longer. Results are interpreted within the context of the two-process model of face processing.

Differential sensitivity to species‐ and race‐based information in the development of attention orienting and attention holding face biases in infancy

“…Infants also showed longer look durations to other-race faces. These findings are consistent with research that found increased looking to other-race faces appearing in naturalistic scenes (Prunty et al, 2020) and with studies indicating a developmental shift toward increased looking to other-race faces by 9 months of age (Fassbender et al, 2016;Liu et al, 2015). The current study demonstrates that these race-based biases in attention holding are not limited to standard looking time tasks but also occur in the context of multi-object search arrays.…”

“…Due to the resulting uneven sample sizes, we conducted secondary analyses that examined these variables for only own‐ and other‐race faces. Finally, we also examined infants’ frequency of initial orienting to target faces to allow for comparison with previous studies that have used this measure (e.g., Kelly et al., 2019; Prunty et al., 2020). We report these effects in Supplemental Results since frequency of initial orienting mirrored overall attention orienting.…”

“…By 2 months of age, infants showed faster and more frequent orienting to human faces compared to non‐human faces appearing in multi‐object search arrays (Jakobsen, Umstead, & Simpson, 2016; Simpson, Maylott, Leonard, Maylott, Leonard, Lazo, & Jakobsen, 2019; Simpson, Maylott, Mitsven, Maylott, Mitsven, Zeng, & Jakobsen, 2019). In contrast, the only prior study examining the development of race‐based orienting biases in infancy found no differences in 6‐, 9‐, and 12‐month‐old infants’ speed or frequency of orienting to own‐ and other‐race faces in naturalistic scenes (Prunty, Jackson, Keemink, & Kelly, 2020).…”

“…While studies have found that infants were faster and more likely to orient to human faces by 2 months of age (Jakobsen et al., 2016; Simpson, Maylott, Leonard, et al, 2019; Simpson, Maylott, Mitsven, et al, 2019), Prunty et al. (2020) found no differences in frequency or speed of orienting to own‐ and other‐race faces. By using a within‐subjects design the current study integrates these independent lines of research and suggests that infants’ attention orienting to faces is differentially sensitive to species‐ and race‐based information.…”

Eye Movements and Behavioural Responses to Gaze‐Contingent Expressive Faces in Typically Developing Infants and Infant Siblings

“…We used a velocity‐based algorithm to identify saccades that has been successfully implemented in several recently published papers [Keemink et al, 2019; Kelly, Duarte, Meary, Bindeman, & Pascalis, 2019; Prunty, Jackson, Keemink, & Kelly, 2020]. Data was smoothed by applying a 4‐sample rolling window that returned a median average.…”