Wan, Lulu
Description
The other-race effect (ORE) in face recognition refers to poorer
recognition of other- than own-race faces. This thesis addresses
two overarching questions: what causes the ORE and what are the
consequences of the ORE.
Concerning the cause(s) of the ORE, two specific questions are
addressed: whether social-motivation or perceptual experience
(contact) contributes to the ORE; and whether plasticity of face
recognition for face subtypes (specific races) is...[Show more] greater in
childhood than in adulthood.
My first empirical paper (Chapter 3) investigates the ORE for
Caucasian and Asian participants (N=480) in an Australian setting
where socio-economic status is similar between these groups.
Using both the Cambridge Face Memory Task and an old-new
recognition task, motivation-to-individuate instructions did not
reduce the ORE for Caucasians and Eastern-raised Asians with low
interracial contact. Further, Western-raised Asians with high
interracial contact showed no ORE. Results imply the cause of the
ORE, in this cultural setting, is lack of interracial contact
rather than lack of social-motivation. A new dual-route approach
is proposed in which two potential causes of the ORE – lack of
social-motivation and lack of experience – can contribute
differently across varying cultural settings.
Another empirical paper (Chapter 5) asks whether the effects of
interracial experience arise due to contact in childhood or
adulthood, again testing Caucasian and Asian participants
(N=373). Correlations with self-reported contact found larger
OREs were significantly associated with lower contact during
childhood, but not adulthood. That is, adulthood contact was
ineffective for improving other-race face recognition. The same
pattern is reported for smaller within-race variations in
ethnicity. Findings imply that, similar to language, the
developmental course of face recognition contains a “sensitive
period” of greater plasticity during childhood.
A third empirical paper (Chapter 4) addresses the apparent
conflict that, in real life, the ORE can have serious
consequences (e.g., cases of wrongful imprisonment based on
eyewitness misidentification), yet, laboratory studies show only
a modest-sized mean ORE. This chapter, using an individual
differences approach, investigates whether there exists a
subgroup of individuals who are so poor at recognising other-race
faces they are 'face blind' for other-race faces. Results
indicated 8.1% of Caucasian and Eastern-raised Asian individuals
(N=444) were other-race face blind. Risk factors included: being
at low end of the normal range of own-race face recognition
ability; and lack of interracial contact (particularly in
childhood); but not lack of effort applied to individuating
other-race faces.
Taken together, my findings have broad theoretical and practical
implications. Theoretically, results argue the cause of the ORE,
at least for Caucasians and Asians in an Australian setting, is
lack of perceptual experience in childhood, and not lack of
social-motivation to individuate other-race people. Practically,
the results argue: overcoming the ORE via real-world contact
requires specifically childhood experience; simply increasing
motivation is ineffective for improving other-race face
recognition; and while some individuals will suffer no real-word
functional consequences of the ORE, others, with other-race face
blindness, would be expected to suffer severe functional problems
in everyday life (e.g., failures to recognise other-race
colleagues in the workplace).
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