Race and Color: Two Sides of One Story? Development of Biases in Categorical Perception

Abstract

Categorical perception is a phenomenon that leads people to group stimuli into categories instead of perceiving their natural continua. This article reviews the literature of two biases connected with categorical perception: categorical color perception and the other‐race effect. Although these two phenomena concern distant targets (colors and faces) and imply different biases (one attentional, one mnemonic), they share at least three commonalities. First, they both involve the chunking of continuous dimensions into categories. Second, adult categories are shaped by cultural processes. Third, infants' discrimination performance seems universal and guided by perception. In this article, it is proposed to look for a common developmental mechanism that clarifies the shift from a perceptual to a sociocognitive knowledge of the environment. New perspectives are discussed.

Perception of Face Race by Infants: Five Developmental Changes

“…However, as we will show, other aspects of the data are consistent with an attunement model in which processing resources are specialized based on frequency of experience . Moreover, it may be more effective to think of the changes and their proposed links collectively as part of a framework that moves beyond perception and considers how traditional models of perceptual development can be conjoined with our understanding of how infants respond to social information in faces .…”

“…Furthermore, the engagement/withdrawal framework is in accord with research from emotion science regarding how adults and infants respond behaviorally to stimuli for which they associate positive versus negative affect (43,44), and studies from vision science contending that approach/avoidance is the most basic communicative signal extracted from faces (45). Overall, the distinction between engagement and withdrawal may provide a way to forge a common framework to describe acquiring perceptual and social-emotional knowledge (9).…”

Walking on egg shells: colorblind ideology and race talk in teacher education

“…Identifying race as a meaningful category does not in itself produce racial bias (Bigler & Hughes, 2009;Wolsko et al, 2000). In fact, research indicates that individuals who endorse a multicultural and/or color-conscious perspective have more accurate knowledge about other racial groups and interact with other racial groups more positively (Timeo, Farroni, & Maass, 2017;Neville, Lilly, Duran, Lee, & Browne, 2000;Valli, 1995).…”

“…Emphasizing race can increase positivity towards other races, particularly if this emphasis is situated within a framework that examines, explains, and values differences, even if these differences are negative (Paris, 2012;Timeo, Farroni, & Maass, 2017). For example, understanding the socio-historical conditions behind the racial achievement gap may dispel myths of superior/inferior intelligence or cultural deficiency (Alland, 2002;Howard, 2010).…”

“…There is a wealth of research on colorblind ideology (Bonilla-Silva, 2006;Brown et al, 2003;Carr, 1997;Dovidio & Gaertner, 2005;Forman, 2004), in education specifically (Anderson, 2007;Aragón, Dovidio, & Graham, 2016;Atwater, 2008;Henry & Givens Generett, 2005;Frank, 2007: Lewis, 2001Spencer, 2008;Timeo, Farroni, & Maass, 2017), and in teacher education even more specifically (Cochran-Smith, 1995, Cooney & Akintunde, 1999Gordon, 2005;Valli, 1995). There is also a wealth of research on race talk in the field of education (Pollock, 2004a(Pollock, , 2008aTatum, 1992Tatum, , 2007Tochluk, 2010;Trainor, 2005;van den Berg, Wetherell, & Houtkoop-Steenstra, 2003).…”