Abstract
People are better at recognizing faces of their own race than those of other race. Tanaka and his colleagues (2004) suggested that people processed faces of their own race more holistically than those of other race. In addition, studies have shown that LSF (Low Spatial Frequency) information is more important in the holistic process of faces than HSF (High Spatial Frequency; Goffaux & Rossion, 2006). To parametrically measure the effect of LSF information on other-race effect, we used binocular rivalry paradigm. In Experiment 1, we made two kinds of filtered faces by applying different cut-off frequencies (above 16 cycles/image for HSF filtered faces; below 8 cycles/image for LSF filtered faces) per each race. Two different faces from each race were presented for 90 seconds to separate eyes. Each face was either HSF or LSF filtered. Perceived duration of own-race face was significantly longer than that of other-race face. This trend was more pronounced in HSF filtered faces, producing the significant interaction between the race and the spatial frequency. Moreover, this significant advantage of own-race face was observed over the effect of eye dominance. Experiment 2 tested whether other-race effect was generalized to full spectrum faces undergoing rivalry. Again, the perceived duration of own-race was significantly longer than that of other-race. Finally, we tested the effect of spatial frequency on binocular rivalry in Experiment 3. Only the same-race faces were used in this experiment and we found that HSF filtered faces were always perceived longer than LSF filtered faces. The results of three experiments suggested that LSF information played an important role in other-race effect by influencing holistic process of faces. Furthermore, for the first time we introduced more parametrical method to measure this effect.
This work was supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation (KOSEF) grant funded by the Korea government(MOST) (No. R01-2008-000-10820-0(2008)).