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Development of DifferentialRecognition for Own- andOther-Race FacesJune E. Chance a , Alison Lockwood Turner a & AlvinG. Goldstein aa University of Missouri , Columbia, USAPublished online: 02 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: June E. Chance , Alison Lockwood Turner & Alvin G. Goldstein(1982) Development of Differential Recognition for Own- and Other-Race Faces,The Journal of Psychology: Interdisciplinary and Applied, 112:1, 29-37, DOI:10.1080/00223980.1982.9923531

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Published as a separate and in The 3oumal of Psychology, 1982, 112, 29-37.

DEVELOPMENT OF DIFFERENTIAL RECOGNITION FOR OWN- AND OTHER-RACE FACES*’

University of Missouri-Columbia

JUNE E . CHANCE, ALISON LOCKWOOD TURNER, AND ALVIN G. GOLDSTEIN

SUMMARY Subjects (N = 106) ranging in age from six to 20 years performed two

face-recognition tasks-one with Caucasians’ photo portraits and one with Orientals’. Although the youngest children recognized both kinds of faces equally well, recognition accuracy for Caucasian faces was superior to that for Oriental faces among older subjects. Results are interpreted in terms of development of a familiar-face schema which facilitates recognition of exem- plars of the more familiar sort of face with increasing age and experience. Boys and girls recognized faces about equally well up to approximately age 13; at that age a trend appeared for girls to be superior to boys in recognizing faces. Females at college level were clearly superior to males at recognizing faces.

A. INTRODUCTION Laboratory studies have demonstrated some basis for the belief widely held

by American Whites that people of other ethnic groups look more alike than do those of their own group ( 2 , 13, 15). Portraits of Whites’ faces seen briefly are more accurately recognized by White Ss than are portraits of either Blacks’ or Orientals’ faces. Two of the studies cited above also show a corresponding own-race effect among Black Ss. The finding that race-of-Ss and race-of- target faces interact suggests that Ss’ unequal prior experience with faces of different races may be afactor in differential face recognition. The differential experience or familiarity hypothesis is further supported in two studies by

* Received in the Editorial Office on June 18, 1982, and published immediately at Provincetown, Massachusetts. Copyright by The Journal Press.

Portions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St. Louis, Mo., 1980. We are grateful for the cooperation of the principals, teachers, and students of the Centralia, Mo., Elementary and Middle schools. We thank Professor Takayoshi Kaneko who provided the supply of Japanese photographs.

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Elliot, Wills, and Goldstein (4) and Malpass, Lavigueur, and Weldon (14) in which S s were first trained in recognition of faces of members of other ethnic groups and later demonstrated improved recognition for new samples of faces from the appropriate ethnic group.

Alternative explanations of differential memory for other races are not supported by other studies. Whites, for example, may experience difficulty in recognizing photographs of Black faces because faces of Blacks photograph less clearly than those of Whites. However, Chance, Goldstein, and McBride ( 2 ) found that both Black and White S s recognized portraits of Orientals less well than those of either Blacks or Whites. Perhaps negative attitudes held toward members of other groups influence recognition; but unless one could sustain an argument that American college students are systematically more anti-Oriental than anti-White or anti-Black, Chance ct d . ’ s findings are also not consistent with an attitudinal bias explanation.

Perhaps faces of different races really do differ in perceived physical or psychological structure. By employing various discrimination and rating tasks, Goldstein and Chance (9, 10, 11) investigated whether different degrees of stimulus similarity were perceived within samples of portraits from various ethnic groups. They found no evidence for this when observers made their judgments with the pictures present. Goldstein ( 7 , 8), on the basis of published physical anthropometric data, has also failed to find that faces of different ethnic groups show different degrees of similarity in their physical structure.

If differential familiarity is a crucial factor in making some types of faces more easily recognized than others, by what means does familiarity affect memory? A suggestion may be found in a paper by Goldstein (6) reporting two studies. That author askedSs ranging in age from three to 20 years to identify pictures of classmates and friends presented in an upside-down orientation. Recognition accuracy increased steadily from 3 to 13 years but thereafter declined so that college adults achieved scores equivalent to those of 4- year-old children. Goldstein suggested that a schema for upright faces devel- oped with increasing age as a function of our multitudes of exposures to faces in an upright orientation as opposed to other orientations. Carey and Diamond (1) and Diamond and Carey (3), also observing age-related detri- mental effects of inversion on face recognition in relation to age-related effects of other transformations (e.g., glasses, hats, clothing) on recognition of up- right faces, have argued for the development of a “canonically oriented standard” face. They suggest that development of such a standard would make encoding of inverted faces more difficult for older than for younger children and would simultaneously enable older children to better recognize upright faces despite paraphernalia changes.

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J. E. CHANCE et d. 3 1

The general proposal that memory schemas develop for visual stimuli and that a person’s human face schema represents a sort of averaging of prior experiences with faces leads to the prediction that, in more experienced persons, memory should be better for upright faces of individuals most like those they see and interact with daily (10). In contemporary American society, even with its mobility and multi-ethnic urban populations, one is still far more likely to interact with individuals similar to himself than with those dissimi- lar. Consequently face schemas should be better attuned to faces more, rather than less, like one’s own.

Goldstein and Chance (12) have proposed a familiar-face schema as an organized process affecting both information inputs and outputs and, in turn, being affected by them. Schema function by producing expectations which direct attention to certain aspects of faces, making attending to and encoding them relatively fast, automatic, and efficient. As a familiar-face schema develops it becomes increasingly effective in processing faces of the familiar class, but may also be relatively less effective in processing faces of a less familiar class. Indeed, under some circumstances, such as inversion of the face, the presence of a well developed schema for upright faces might be actively detrimental to recognizing stimuli which evoke the schema but fit it poorly.

In the present study, a developmental approach is used to test the relevance of a familiar-face schema to differential own- and other-race face memory. If face schemas become simultaneously more effective with familiar types of faces and relatively less effective with unfamiliar sorts, then the size of disparity in performance between recognition of own- and other-race faces should be age-related. That is, older Ss should show larger disparities be- tween their recognition performances on White and Oriental faces than younger Ss show.

Goldstein and Chance (12) presented some data from S s ranging between 6 and 2 0 years that bear on the relations of age to this performance difference. However, in that exploratory study the samples of pictures used and other details of the procedure were not the same for the younger and the college S s. Nor were anySs tested in the age ranges between 12 and 20. Nonetheless, the expected effect was obtained. Children, up to 12 or 13 years of age showed a steady increment in performance on all faces without any reliable differences between their performances on pictures of Whites and of Japanese. College adults, however, showed the expected difference in performance, doing markedly better on Whites’ than on the Orientals’ faces. The present study was designed to make a less ambiguous test, employing the same stimuli and experimental procedures with Ss at all ages and introducing a sample

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of 13- and 14-year-olds in the hope of discovering more about the changes intervening between 12 and 20.

B. METHOD

1. Subjects

A total of 106 White Ss participated in the study: 26 first- and second- graders, 2 7 fifth- and sixth-graders, 31 seventh- and eighth-graders, and 2 2 college student volunteers. There were approximately equal numbers of males and females in each age group. Numbers in each subgroup are shown in Table 1.

2 . Stimuli

Two duplicate sets of 64 35mm slide portraits of Japanese faces and two of similar portraits of Caucasian faces were employed as stimuli. Pictures were obtained from university identification photos taken against a blank back- ground from the University of Missouri-Columbia and from the Univer- sity of Tokyo in Japan. The original photos were rephotographed and made into slides. All slides were judged to be of roughly the same quality. Half of each picture set was male and half was female. Pictures were full-face portraits, selected to avoid faces with glasses, jewelry, or marked blemishes. Pictures were vignetted to remove clothing as a cue. When projected, faces were the same size.

Two carousel projector trays each contained four subsets of 16 study pictures of either White or Japanese faces. Two corresponding recognition test trays contained 64 slides of either White or Japanese faces. Each S, when seeing the test tray slides, would see the 16 study slides, previously seen, randomly intermixed with the 48 slides from the other three study subsets. In order to insure that the outcome of the study would not be confounded with the unique characteristics of any given sample of faces, approximately equal numbers ofSs of each age and sex saw one of the four subsets of study pictures of each picture type.

3 . Procedure

Each S saw pictures of both Whites and Japanese in two individual experi- mental sessions four to seven days apart. For each set of pictures, the recogni- tion task took place immediately after the study trial. Approximately equal numbers of S s in each group saw slides of either Japanese or Whites a t the first session. S s were asked to look a t the study slides carefully in order to be able to

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pick out the pictures seen from among similar pictures later. Study slides were shown for five seconds each. When the study trial was completed, the E immediately projected the 64 test slides and instructed the S to pick out the pictures just seen from among this larger set by saying either “o1d”or“new” to each picture as it was shown. Each study slide was shown until the S said “old” or “new.” The E recorded the Ss’ responses, but Ss were not told whether their responses were correct. The same procedure, but with the alternative picture type, was employed a t the second session.

TABLE 1 MEANS, STANDARD DEVIATIONS (IN ITALICS) FOR RECOGNITION

ACCURACY BY GRADE LEVEL, PICTURE TYPE. A N D S E X OF SUBIECT

Males Females

Picture type Hits False alarms d ’ Hits False alarms d ’

Grades 1 and 2 (n = 15) Grades I and 2 (n = 11) White 7.67 9.93 .85 8.27 11.00 .94

2.94 7.02 .58 2.94 8.34 .71

Japanese 8.67 13.40 . 7 5 7.02 12.09 .79 3.04 6.43 .40 2.71 7.55 3 5

Gmdes 5 and 6 ( n = IS) Grades 5 and 6 (n = 12) White 10.00 9.47 1.34 10.08 7.58 1 .so

Japanese 9.60 11.53 1.23 8.25 12.17 . 7 7

2.51 6.08 .67 3.15 4.83 .66

3.40 6.51 .67 3.08 6.24 5 8

Grades 7 and 8 (n = I S ) Grades 7 and 8 In = 16) White 9.33 7 .07 1.41 11.56 6.88 1.82

2.77 4.43 .58 1.59 4.66 .53

Japanese 10.00 12.20 1.11 10.71 9.64 1.36 3.16 5.92 .53 1.33 6.02 .58

ColLege ( n = I?) Coliege (n = 10) White 11.75 6.75 1.92 14.40 5.80 2.93

1.96 5.48 .65 1.58 5.77 .46

Japanese 10.33 11.25 1.23 13.10 9.00 1.97 3.50 6.34 .78 1.60 6.16 .40

Note: Maximum number of hits = 16, false alarms = 48.

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2.50 2.40 2.30 2.20 2.10 2.00 1.90 1.80 1.70

Q) 1.60

1.40 g 1.30 1.20 1.10 1.00 .90 180 .70 .60 .50;

.- E 1.50-

C. RESULTS Table 1 summarizes accuracy of face recognition as assessed by numbers of

hits, false alarms, and d ' scores by age and sex of S and by picture type. An analysis of variance for unequal number of S s , withSs nested within age and sex, was performed for the d' measure, which combines hits and false alarms into a single measure of accuracy. Older Ss were more accurate in their recognition memory for both types of pictures than were younger Ss, F (3, 98) = 19.24, p < .001. A Duncan Multiple Range test of the mean d ' values a t each of the four age levels sampled indicated that all values were significantly different from each other. Mean d' values were: .84 a t grades one and two; 1 . 2 2 at grades five and six; 1 . 7 7 a t grades seven and eight; and 1.98 at college level. Female S s recognized all faces more accurately (mean d' = 1.49) than did male Ss (mean d ' = l.Zl), F (1, 98) = 6.17,

- - -White Pictures - - Japanese Pictures - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - D

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p < .01. White portraits were better recognized (mean d’ = 1.56) than Japanese portraits (mean d’ = 1.14), F (1, 98) = 47.73, p < .Owl.

The central prediction of the study, that older Ss would show larger differences between their levels of accuracy than would younger Ss when identifying portraits of Whites and of Japanese, is confirmed by the significant interaction obtained between Age and Picture Type, F (3, 97) = 5.65, p < .001. The F test for simple effects applied to the points shown graphically in Figure 1 indicates that while performance on pictures of Whites and Orientals does not differ a t the earliest age level (grades one and two), performance does differ in the predicted direction a t all the subsequent ages.

Sex of S and Picture Type interaction was also significant, F (1, 97) = 5.58, p < .02. This result reflects the fact that females show larger disparities between their levels of performance on pictures of Whites and Japanese than do males. The performance disparitycan be seen in the differences in d‘ means between White and Japanese pictures for females ( 2 . 7 7 for White pictures and 2 . 2 1 for Japanese). For males, the means are 2.35 for White pictures and 2 . 0 7 for Japanese. The potential triple interaction between Age, Sex, and Picture Type was not significant.

Finally, a significant interaction between Age and Sex of S was obtained, F (3, 97) = 4.48, p < .005. An F test for simple effects indicates that the sex differences in overall face picture performance is not significant at the two early ages, attains borderline significance at seventh and eighth grade levels (p < .lo), and is clearly a significant difference in the college age sample.

D. DISCUSSION Face recognition performance at the youngest ages studied here appears to

be independent of the types of faces used as stimuli. In contrast, among older children and college adults, face type makes a difference in how accurately S s recognize. These data appear to support the hypothesis that an age-related memory schema develops for own-race human faces which facilitates recogni- tion of faces of the familiar class.

Since only the younger children (first- and second-graders) failed to show a significant disparity in their d’ scores for White and Japanese faces, and since their d’ scores were exceedingly low, one might wonder whether the observed increase in disparity among older Ss could be an artifactual effect of the youngest children having performed in a random manner. However, for each picture type all children saw 16 target faces which were mixed among 48 like-type faces for the recognition test. Possible correct choices by chance would be 2 5 % . Accuracy of the youngest children, measured as number of

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hits, was 48% on White pictures and 54% on Japanese pictures. Their false alarm rates were 2 1% on White photos and 27% on Japanese photos. More- over, no individual child had negative or zero d ’ scores. These observations dispel1 the possibility that the performance of the youngest children shown in Figure 1, in terms of d ‘ values, represent random responding.

While the present study finds the predicted age-related differences in recog- nition of own- and other-race faces, a decrement was not observed in perfor- mance on Japanese faces at the college age, which might have been predicted from Goldstein’s (6) earlier findings regarding the effects of inverting faces on recognition of them. What is observed here appears to be afacilitatingeffect of an own-race face schema on perception and memory of new instances of the class of familiar faces, rather than detrimental effects of the schema on unfamiliar sorts of faces. Further research would be required to delineate the particular conditions under which a face memory schema might exert one or both effects.

One might ask whether the results here could not be accounted for as neatly by saying that there is an increased capacity on the part of older children to discriminate among faces. Neither the theory from which this study derives, nor the outcome of the study, precludes describing the outcome as increased discrimination accuracy. The present study, however, tried to address the question of why increased performance occurs with increasing age. If the proposed face schema is regarded as an information processing structure (program) which increases efficiency of attending selectively in order to make relevant discriminations among faces, then the schema concept provides a potential model for explaining why children come to recognize faces better with age: not because they have been exposed repeatedly to those particular faces, but because they have been exposed repeatedly to faces as a class of stimuli. Moreover, the crux of the present study lies in the differential predic- tion of increase in the recognizability of White (familiar class) compared to Japanese (unfamiliar class) faces. While a simple discrimination learning approach might account for the observed overall increase in ability to recog- nize faces with increasing age, it does not account for the fact that children’s increased recognition of faces was different for White and Japanese faces.

Finally, there are two interesting observations about sex differences in face recogni5on in these data. Female Ss were more accurate than male Ss overall a t recognizing faces; women’s superiority of face recognition is commonly found in studies employing college age Ss where stimuli are pictures of persons similar to themselves; see Ellis (5) and Yarmey (16, pp. 127-182) for a review of relevant studies. The present study suggests that the onset of female

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recognition memory superiority may coincide with onset of adolescence, implying that development of particular patterns of interests and motivations may influence memory processing of faces. Further, the observation that female Ss show a larger disparity between their levels of performance on White and Oriental faces than do males also tends to support the idea of the differential effect of familiar-face schema on own- and other-race recognition. Females, who are very good face recognizers-or a t least become so earlier than do ma lesa l so show larger disparities between their White and Oriental face performances than do males.

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