Unité Cognition et Développement et Laboratoire de Neurophysiologie, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
Dev Sci. 2010 Jan 1;13(1):181-7. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2009.00876.x.
It is well known that adults' face recognition is characterized by an 'other-race effect' (ORE; see Meissner & Brigham, 2001), but few studies have investigated this ORE during the development of the face processing system. Here we examined the role of experience with other-race faces during childhood by testing a group of 6- to 14-year-old Asian children adopted between 2 and 26 months in Caucasian families living in Western Europe, as well as a group of age-matched Caucasian children. The latter group showed a strong ORE in favour of own-race faces that was stable from 6 to 14 years of age. The adopted participants did not show a significant reversal of the ORE, unlike a recently reported study (Sangrigoli et al., 2005), but rather comparable results with Asian and Caucasian faces. Their pattern of performance was neither influenced by their age of adoption, nor by the amount of experience they accumulated during childhood with other-race faces. These results indicate that the balance of performance with Asian and Caucasian faces can be modulated, but not completely reversed, in children whose exposure to own- and other-race faces changes drastically during the period of maturation of the face recognition system, depending on the length of exposure to the new face race. Overall, experience appears to be crucial during childhood to shape the face recognition system towards the most predominant morphologies of faces present in the environment.
众所周知，成年人的面孔识别具有“异族效应”（ORE；见 Meissner & Brigham，2001），但很少有研究在面孔处理系统的发展过程中调查这种 ORE。在这里，我们通过测试一组 6 至 14 岁的亚洲儿童来研究童年时期与异族面孔接触的经验所扮演的角色，这些儿童在 2 至 26 个月大时被收养在居住在西欧的白人家庭中，以及一组年龄匹配的白人儿童。后者组表现出强烈的有利于本族面孔的 ORE，从 6 岁到 14 岁一直保持稳定。与最近的一项研究（Sangrigoli 等人，2005）不同，被收养的参与者并没有表现出 ORE 的明显逆转，而是与亚洲和高加索面孔具有可比的结果。他们的表现模式既不受收养年龄的影响，也不受他们在童年时期与异族面孔接触积累的经验数量的影响。这些结果表明，在面孔识别系统成熟期间，自身和异族面孔的暴露急剧变化的儿童中，可以调节与亚洲和高加索面孔的表现平衡，但不能完全逆转，这取决于接触新面孔种族的时间长短。总的来说，经验在儿童时期似乎对塑造面向环境中最主要的面部形态的面部识别系统至关重要。
