Department of Psychology, Anglia Ruskin University, East Road, Cambridge CB1 1PT, England.
Dev Psychol. 2012 Mar;48(2):499-508. doi: 10.1037/a0026524. Epub 2011 Dec 19.
The own-age bias is one in which people recognize faces of people their own age more accurately than faces of other ages (e.g., Anastasi & Rhodes, 2005, 2006) and appears to be, at least, partially based on experience (Harrison & Hole, 2009). Indeed, Hills and Lewis (2011a) have shown that 8-year-old faces are more accurately recognized by 8-year-old children than by 6- or 11-year-old children, suggesting the own-age bias develops rapidly. The present study explores the own-age bias in a developmental study in participants aged 6-10 years. Ninety participants (divided into 3 groups of 30 on the basis of their age at the first time of testing) undertook a standard old/new recognition paradigm in which their recognition accuracy was measured for 8- and 20-year-old faces. Results showed that when the participants were 8 years old, they recognized 8-year-old faces more accurately than when they were 7 or 9 years old. This effect was found to be based on mechanisms that differ from simple developmental improvement. This is the first study to show the development of the own-age bias in face recognition using a longitudinal design. These results show that the face recognition system is updated on the basis of recent experience and/or motivation to process faces, creating recognition biases.
年龄偏见是指人们更准确地识别与自己年龄相同的人的面孔，而不是其他年龄段的人的面孔（例如，Anastasi 和 Rhodes，2005，2006），并且这种偏见至少部分基于经验（Harrison 和 Hole，2009）。事实上，Hills 和 Lewis（2011a）已经表明，8 岁的孩子比 6 岁或 11 岁的孩子更准确地识别 8 岁的面孔，这表明年龄偏见发展迅速。本研究在 6-10 岁的参与者中进行了一项发展研究，以探索年龄偏见。90 名参与者（根据第一次测试时的年龄分为 3 组，每组 30 名）进行了标准的旧/新识别范式，测量了他们对 8 岁和 20 岁面孔的识别准确性。结果表明，当参与者 8 岁时，他们比 7 岁或 9 岁时更准确地识别 8 岁的面孔。这一效应是基于与单纯的发展性提高不同的机制产生的。这是第一项使用纵向设计显示面孔识别中年龄偏见发展的研究。这些结果表明，面孔识别系统基于最近的经验和/或处理面孔的动机进行更新，从而产生识别偏见。
