The Other-Race Effect (ORE) Across Development

Greg Reynolds and Kelly Roth have conducted ample research on facial processing in infancy as we learned from the talk on “The development of attentional biases for faces in infancy: A developmental systems perspective” (Reynolds & Roth, 2018). As the title suggests, this work reviewed the development of different attentional biases found in facial processing in infancy, from preferences for faces over objects, human faces over other-species faces, mother’s faces over other faces, female faces over male faces, and same-race faces over other-race faces. Of particular importance in today’s society is the development of racial categorization in facial processing. The other-race effect, or ORE, specifically refers to a “disadvantage for processing and recognizing individual exemplars of other-race faces in comparison to own-race faces” (Reynolds & Roth, 2018). The ORE develops early in infancy, albeit weakly: 3-month-olds show evidence of the ORE, yet it is relatively easily extinguished with exposure to other-race faces. However, from 3 to 9 months, the ORE increases and is not so easily diminished (Reynolds & Roth, 2018). Interestingly and pointedly, the ORE develops before the other-species effect (OSE). The OSE details a preference in facial processing for human faces over those of other species; it does not fully develop until 6 to 9 months. The ORE and OSE are examples of perceptual narrowing – a “developmental process that occurs as infants gain extensive experience with stimuli specific to their native environment” (Reynolds & Roth, 2018). This raises the question does perceptual narrowing in infancy allow for sub-divisions in other-race categorization (e.g. Black vs Asian faces), or is it a broader categorization, such as own-race vs. all other races?

Quinn and colleagues set out to answer this question in their article “Narrowing in categorical responding to other-race face classes by infants” (Quinn, Lee, Pascalis, & Tanaka, 2016). Using a familiarization/novelty-preference procedure, they found that the ORE differentially allows for sub-categorization across development. 6-month-old Caucasian infants formed a preference for White faces over Black and Asian faces, yet they maintained distinct categories of Black vs Asian faces. However, 9-month-old Caucasian infants lost the distinction between other-race faces (Quinn et al., 2016). This is consistent with previous findings that the ORE, while present at 3-months, strengthens from 6- to 9-months (Reynolds and Roth, 2018). Clearly the ORE represents an unconscious attentional bias, but it is important to note that the ORE is easily avoided with early dynamic exposure to other-race faces, such as in-person interaction or diverse picture books (Reynolds & Roth, 2018). It is likely that the lack of distinct racial categorization would also fail to manifest if exposure to other-race faces was increased in infancy.

Works Cited: 

Reynolds, G., Roth, K. “The development of attentional biases for faces in infancy: A developmental systems perspective.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 9, no. 222, 2018, pp. 1-16., doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00222.

Quinn, P., Lee, K., Pascalis, O., Tanaka, J. “Narrowing in categorical responding to other-race face classes by infants.” Developmental Science, vol. 19, no. 3, 2016, pp. 362-371, doi:10.1111/desc.12301.