Kelly David J, Quinn Paul C, Slater Alan M, Lee Kang, Gibson Alan, Smith Michael, Ge Liezhong, Pascalis Olivier
Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, UK.
Dev Sci. 2005 Nov;8(6):F31-6. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2005.0434a.x.
Adults are sensitive to the physical differences that define ethnic groups. However, the age at which we become sensitive to ethnic differences is currently unclear. Our study aimed to clarify this by testing newborns and young infants for sensitivity to ethnicity using a visual preference (VP) paradigm. While newborn infants demonstrated no spontaneous preference for faces from either their own- or other-ethnic groups, 3-month-old infants demonstrated a significant preference for faces from their own-ethnic group. These results suggest that preferential selectivity based on ethnic differences is not present in the first days of life, but is learned within the first 3 months of life. The findings imply that adults' perceptions of ethnic differences are learned and derived from differences in exposure to own- versus other-race faces during early development.
成年人对界定不同种族群体的身体差异很敏感。然而，我们对种族差异变得敏感的年龄目前尚不清楚。我们的研究旨在通过使用视觉偏好（VP）范式测试新生儿和幼儿对种族的敏感性来阐明这一点。虽然新生儿对来自自己种族或其他种族群体的面孔没有自发偏好，但3个月大的婴儿对来自自己种族群体的面孔表现出显著偏好。这些结果表明，基于种族差异的优先选择性在生命的最初几天并不存在，而是在生命的前3个月内习得的。这些发现意味着成年人对种族差异的认知是在早期发育过程中通过接触自己种族与其他种族面孔的差异而习得和形成的。
