Dunham Yarrow, Stepanova Elena V, Dotsch Ron, Todorov Alexander
Department of Psychology, Yale University, USA.
Dev Sci. 2015 May;18(3):469-83. doi: 10.1111/desc.12228. Epub 2014 Aug 25.
Prior research on the development of race-based categorization has concluded that children understand the perceptual basis of race categories from as early as age 4 (e.g. Aboud, 1988). However, such work has rarely separated the influence of skin color from other physiognomic features considered by adults to be diagnostic of race categories. In two studies focusing on Black-White race categorization judgments in children between the ages of 4 and 9, as well as in adults, we find that categorization decisions in early childhood are determined almost entirely by attention to skin color, with attention to other physiognomic features exerting only a small influence on judgments as late as middle childhood. We further find that when skin color cues are largely eliminated from the stimuli, adults readily shift almost entirely to focus on other physiognomic features. However, 6- and 8-year-old children show only a limited ability to shift attention to facial physiognomy and so perform poorly on the task. These results demonstrate that attention to 'race' in younger children is better conceptualized as attention to skin color, inviting a reinterpretation of past work focusing on children's race-related cognition.
先前关于基于种族的分类发展的研究得出结论，儿童早在4岁时就理解种族类别的感知基础（例如，阿布德，1988年）。然而，这类研究很少将肤色的影响与成年人认为可用于诊断种族类别的其他相貌特征的影响区分开来。在两项针对4至9岁儿童以及成年人的黑白种族分类判断的研究中，我们发现幼儿期的分类决策几乎完全由对肤色的关注决定，而对其他相貌特征的关注直到童年中期才对判断产生较小影响。我们还发现，当刺激中基本消除肤色线索时，成年人几乎会立即完全转向关注其他相貌特征。然而，6岁和8岁的儿童在将注意力转移到面部相貌上的能力有限，因此在这项任务中表现不佳。这些结果表明，年幼儿童对“种族”的关注更好地被概念化为对肤色的关注，这引发了对过去关注儿童种族相关认知的研究的重新解释。
