Liezhong Ge

Cross-Race Preferences for Same-Race Faces Extend Beyond the African Versus Caucasian Contrast in 3-Month-Old Infants

A visual preference procedure was used to examine preferences among faces of different ethnicities (African, Asian, Caucasian, and Middle Eastern) in Chinese 3-month-old infants exposed only to Chinese faces. The infants demonstrated a preference for faces from their own ethnic group. Alongside previous results showing that Caucasian infants exposed only to Caucasian faces prefer same-race faces (Kelly et al., 2005) and that Caucasian and African infants exposed only to native faces prefer the same over the other-race faces (Bar-Haim, Ziv, Lamy, & Hodes, 2006), the findings reported here (a) extend the same-race preference observed in young infants to a new race of infants (Chinese), and (b) show that cross-race preferences for same-race faces extend beyond the perceptually robust contrast between African and Caucasian faces.

Two Faces of the Other-Race Effect: Recognition and Categorisation of Caucasian and Chinese Faces

The other-race effect is a collection of phenomena whereby faces of ones own race are processed differently from those of other races. Previous studies have revealed a paradoxical mirror pattern of an own-race advantage in face recognition and an other-race advantage in race-based categorisation. With a well-controlled design, we compared recognition and categorisation of own-race and other-race faces in both Caucasian and Chinese participants. Compared with own-race faces, other-race faces were less accurately and more slowly recognised, whereas they were more rapidly categorised by race. The mirror pattern was confirmed by a unique negative correlation between the two effects in terms of reaction time with a hierarchical regression analysis. This finding suggests an antagonistic interaction between the processing of face identity and that of face category, and a common underlying processing mechanism.

An inner face advantage in children's recognition of familiar peers

Childrens recognition of familiar own-age peers was investigated. Chinese children (4-, 8-, and 14-year-olds) were asked to identify their classmates from photographs showing the entire face, the internal facial features only, the external facial features only, or the eyes, nose, or mouth only. Participants from all age groups were familiar with the faces used as stimuli for 1 academic year. The results showed that children from all age groups demonstrated an advantage for recognition of the internal facial features relative to their recognition of the external facial features. Thus, previous observations of a shift in reliance from external to internal facial features can be attributed to experience with faces rather than to age-related changes in face processing.

Activation of Face Expertise and the Inversion Effect

We used a contextual priming paradigm to examine top-down influences on the face-inversion effect. Adult participants were primed with either faces or Chinese characters and then tested on ambiguous figures that could be perceived as either faces or Chinese characters, dependent on the priming condition. The ambiguous figures differed from one another in their configural information, which is crucial for processing faces but not Chinese characters. The inversion effect was observed in the face-priming condition, but not in the character-priming condition. The present results provide the first direct evidence that top-down activation of the face-processing expertise system plays a crucial role in the face-inversion effect.

The other face of the other-race effect: An fMRI investigation of the other-race face categorization advantage

The present study was the first to use the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methodology to investigate the neural correlates of race categorization of own- and other-race faces. We found that Chinese participants categorized the race of Caucasian faces more accurately and faster than that of Chinese faces, replicating the robust effect of the other-race categorization advantage. Regions of interest (ROI) analyses revealed greater neural activations when participants were categorizing own-race faces than other-race faces in the bilateral ventral occipito-temporal cortex (VOT) such as the fusiform face areas (FFAs) and the occipital face areas (OFAs). Within the left FFA, there was also a significant negative correlation between the behavioral difference of own- and other-race face categorization accuracy and the activation difference between categorizing own- and other-race faces. Whole brain analyses showed that categorizing own-race faces induced greater activations in the right medial frontal cortex (MFC) and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) than categorizing other-race faces. Psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analyses revealed that the frontal cortical regions interacted more strongly with the posterior VOT during the categorization of own-race faces than that of other-race faces. Overall, our findings suggest that relative to the categorization of other-race faces, more cortical resources are engaged during the categorization of own-race faces with which we have a higher level of processing expertise. This increased involvement of cortical neural sources perhaps serves to provide more in-depth processing of own-race faces (such as individuation), which in turn paradoxically results in the behavioral other-race categorization advantage.

Rigid facial motion influences featural, but not holistic, face processing

We report three experiments in which we investigated the effect of rigid facial motion on face processing. Specifically, we used the face composite effect to examine whether rigid facial motion influences primarily featural or holistic processing of faces. In Experiments 1-3, participants were first familiarized with dynamic displays in which a target face turned from one side to another; then at test, participants judged whether the top half of a composite face (the top half of the target/foil face aligned or misaligned with the bottom half of a foil face) belonged to the target face. We compared performance in the dynamic condition to various static control conditions in Experiments 1-3, which differed from each other in terms of the display order of the multiple static images or the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) between the images. We found that the size of the face composite effect in the dynamic condition was significantly smaller than that in the static conditions. In other words, the dynamic face display influenced participants to process the target faces in a part-based manner and consequently their recognition of the upper portion of the composite face at test became less interfered with by the aligned lower part of the foil face. The findings from the present experiments provide the strongest evidence to date to suggest that the rigid facial motion mainly influences facial featural, but not holistic, processing.

Two faces of the other-race effect: Recognition and categorization of Caucasians and Chinese Faces

The other-race effect is a collection of phenomena whereby faces of ones own race are processed differently from those of other races. Previous studies have revealed a paradoxical mirror pattern of an own-race advantage in face recognition and an other-race advantage in race-based categorisation. With a well-controlled design, we compared recognition and categorisation of own-race and other-race faces in both Caucasian and Chinese participants. Compared with own-race faces, other-race faces were less accurately and more slowly recognised, whereas they were more rapidly categorised by race. The mirror pattern was confirmed by a unique negative correlation between the two effects in terms of reaction time with a hierarchical regression analysis. This finding suggests an antagonistic interaction between the processing of face identity and that of face category, and a common underlying processing mechanism.

Asian infants show preference for own-race but not other-race female faces: the role of infant caregiving arrangements

Previous studies have reported that 3- to 4-month-olds show a visual preference for faces of the same gender as their primary caregiver (e.g., Quinn et al., 2002). In addition, this gender preference has been observed for own-race faces, but not for other-race faces (Quinn et al., 2008). However, most of the studies of face gender preference have focused on infants at 3–4 months. Development of gender preference in later infancy is still unclear. Moreover, all of these studies were conducted with Caucasian infants from Western countries. It is thus unknown whether a gender preference that is limited to own-race faces can be generalized to infants from other racial groups and different cultures with distinct caregiving practices. The current study investigated the face gender preferences of Asian infants presented with male versus female face pairs from Asian and Caucasian races at 3, 6, and 9 months and the role of caregiving arrangements in eliciting those preferences. The results showed an own-race female face preference in 3- and 6-month-olds, but not in 9-month-olds. Moreover, the downturn in the female face preference correlated with the cumulative male face experience obtained in caregiving practices. In contrast, no gender preference or correlation between gender preference and face experience was found for other-race Caucasian faces at any age. The data indicate that the face gender preference is not specifically rooted in Western cultural caregiving practices. In addition, the race dependency of the effect previously observed for Caucasian infants reared by Caucasian caregivers looking at Caucasian but not Asian faces extends to Asian infants reared by Asian caregivers looking at Asian but not Caucasian faces. The findings also provide additional support for an experiential basis for the gender preference, and in particular suggest that cumulative male face experience plays a role in inducing a downturn in the preference in older infants.

Eye tracking reveals a crucial role for facial motion in recognition of faces by infants.

Current knowledge about face processing in infancy comes largely from studies using static face stimuli, but faces that infants see in the real world are mostly moving ones. To bridge this gap, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Asian infants (N = 118) were familiarized with either moving or static Asian female faces, and then their face recognition was tested with static face images. Eye-tracking methodology was used to record eye movements during the familiarization and test phases. The results showed a developmental change in eye movement patterns, but only for the moving faces. In addition, the more infants shifted their fixations across facial regions, the better their face recognition was, but only for the moving faces. The results suggest that facial movement influences the way faces are encoded from early in development.

Elastic Facial Movement Influences Part-Based but Not Holistic Processing

Face processing has been studied for decades. However, most of the empirical investigations have been conducted using static face images as stimuli. Little is known about whether static face processing findings can be generalized to real-world contexts in which faces are constantly moving. The present study investigated the nature of face processing (holistic vs. part-based) in elastic moving faces. Specifically, we focused on whether elastic moving faces, as compared with static ones, can facilitate holistic or part-based face processing. Using the composite paradigm, we asked participants to remember either an elastic moving face (i.e., a face that blinks and chews) or a static face, and then tested with a static composite face. The composite effect was (a) significantly smaller in the dynamic condition than in the static condition, (b) consistently found with different face encoding times (Experiments 1-3), and (c) present for the recognition of both upper and lower face parts (Experiment 4). These results suggest that elastic facial motion facilitates part-based processing rather than holistic processing. Thus, whereas previous work with static faces has emphasized an important role for holistic processing, the current work highlights an important role for featural processing with moving faces.