Читать книгу Infants and Children in Context - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 229

Newborns are born with preferences for particular visual stimuli. Newborns prefer to look at patterns, such as a few large squares, rather than a plain stimulus such as a black or white oval shape (Fantz, 1961). Newborns also prefer to look at faces, and the preference for faces increases with age (Frank, Vul, & Johnson, 2009). Face processing is influenced by experience with faces (Quinn, Lee, & Pascalis, 2018). Infants generally tend to see more female than male faces and more own- than other-race faces (Sugden, Mohamed-Ali, & Moulson, 2014). For example, between birth and 3 months, infants begin to prefer to look at and can more easily see female faces as compared with male faces, when their caregivers are female, but do not show similar preferences when their caregivers are male (Bayet et al., 2015; Rennels & Kayl, 2017).

Infants show similar preferences and abilities to discriminate same-race faces over other-race faces. That is, between approximately 3 and 9 months of age, infants tend to prefer and are better able to distinguish faces of frequently experienced groups, typically faces of members of their own race. However, differentiation of faces from within unfamiliar groups, such as other races, becomes more difficult with age (Markant & Scott, 2018). After about 9 months, infants show difficulty discriminating among unfamiliar faces, such as other-race faces. This decline in sensitivity to discriminate faces within unfamiliar groups is called perceptual narrowing (Scott, Pascalis, & Nelson, 2007). Experience influences perceptual narrowing. Specifically, babies who are extensively exposed to other-race faces (e.g., through adoption, training, or living in racially diverse communities) show less perceptual narrowing (Ellis, Xiao, Lee, & Oakes, 2017). Some researchers speculate that early perceptual differences in infancy may be associated with the emergence of implicit racial bias in childhood, but more research is needed to understand the social implications of same- and other-race face recognition (K. Lee, Quinn, & Pascalis, 2017; Quinn, Lee, & Pascalis, 2019).