Department of Psychology, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, A1B 3X9, Canada,
Mem Cognit. 2013 Oct;41(7):1021-31. doi: 10.3758/s13421-013-0316-7.
Recognition of own-race faces is superior to recognition of other-race faces. In the present experiments, we explored the role of top-down social information in the encoding and recognition of racially ambiguous faces. Hispanic and African American participants studied and were tested on computer-generated ambiguous-race faces (composed of 50 % Hispanic and 50 % African American features; MacLin & Malpass, Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 7:98-118, 2001). In Experiment 1, the faces were randomly assigned to two study blocks. In each block, a group label was provided that indicated that those faces belonged to African American or to Hispanic individuals. Both participant groups exhibited superior memory for faces studied in the block with their own-race label. In Experiment 2, the faces were studied in a single block with no labels, but tested in two blocks in which labels were provided. Recognition performance was not influenced by the labeled race at test. Taken together, these results confirm the claim that purely top-down information can yield the well-documented cross-race effect in recognition, and additionally they suggest that the bias takes place at encoding rather than testing.
种族内面孔的识别优于种族间面孔的识别。在本实验中，我们探讨了自上而下的社会信息在种族模糊面孔的编码和识别中的作用。西班牙裔和非裔美国参与者在计算机生成的模糊种族面孔（由 50%的西班牙裔和 50%的非裔美国人特征组成；MacLin 和 Malpass，《心理学、公共政策和法律》7:98-118，2001）上进行了学习和测试。在实验 1 中，面孔被随机分配到两个学习组块中。在每个组块中，提供了一个群体标签，表明这些面孔属于非裔美国人或西班牙裔人。两个参与者群体在与自己种族标签对应的组块中对面孔的记忆表现都更好。在实验 2 中，面孔在没有标签的单个组块中进行学习，但在两个提供标签的测试组块中进行测试。测试时的标记种族并没有影响识别表现。综合这些结果证实了纯粹的自上而下的信息可以产生已被充分记录的识别中的跨种族效应的说法，并且还表明这种偏差发生在编码而不是测试阶段。
