the impact of race and affect on infant visual attention to faces

Abstract

Perceptual narrowing is a domain general developmental process involving a loss of perceptual sensitivity to stimuli not regularly encountered in one’s native environment. One outcome is the other-race effect, which is characterized by increasing difficulty discriminating other-race faces in infancy (Kelly et al., 2007). This affects selective attention to facial features. White 9-month-olds look most at eyes of own-race and mouths of other-race faces (Wheeler et al., 2011). Affect also affects infant attention to faces. Four- and seven-month-olds spend less time fixated on facial features of angry compared to happy or neutral faces (Hunnius et al., 2011). Eight- to fourteen-month-olds look quicker at static angry than happy faces (LoBue & DeLoache, 2010). This eye-tracking study investigated the effects of race and affect on infant selective attention to facial features. Ten-month-old infants (N=10) accumulated 20 seconds of looking to a static image of a woman’s face displaying either a neutral or angry affect. Infants repeated the procedure with the same actor displaying the other affect. Infants were tested with either own- or other-race faces, and order of affect was counter-balanced across participants. The impact of race and affect on the distribution of fixations to the eyes, nose, and mouth was analyzed. Results showed a main effect of race (F(1,8)=7.012, p=.029) and an interaction of race and affect (F(1,8)=7.560, p=.025) on selective attention to eyes. Infants looked more to own- than other-race eyes. Infants looked similarly across affect to other-race eyes (p=.424) but looked more to angry own-race compared to neutral own-race eyes (p=.031). These findings indicate 10-month-olds show differential visual scanning based on affect when viewing own-race faces but not when viewing other-race faces. Thus, the other-race effect may be associated with enhanced emotional processing of own- compared to other-race faces by 10 months of age.