Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development.
Dev Psychol. 2020 Jan;56(1):15-27. doi: 10.1037/dev0000858. Epub 2019 Dec 2.
Perceptual narrowing occurs in human infants for other-race faces. A paired-comparison task measuring infant looking time was used to investigate the hypothesis that adding emotional expressiveness to other-race faces would help infants break through narrowing and reinstate other-race face recognition. Experiment 1 demonstrated narrowing for White infants viewing neutral Asian faces: whereas 3-month-olds differentiated Asian faces, 6-month-olds did not. Experiment 2 showed that White 6-month-olds differentiated the same Asian faces depicted with angry or happy expressions. Experiments 3 and 4 yielded comparable results for 6- and 9-month-olds tested with Black faces (i.e., narrowing with neutral faces, reinstatement of sensitivity when the faces were presented with emotion). Experiment 5 showed that White 6-month-olds did not differentiate inverted angry or happy Asian faces, and that White 9-month-olds did not differentiate inverted angry or happy Black faces. Looking time during familiarization did not differ for upright neutral and emotional faces, indicating that the expressions did not yield more salient stimuli. Also, consistent with the inversion findings, analyses of the low-level image properties as well as equivalent pairwise similarity ratings obtained from White adults for the neutral and emotional faces indicated that the expressions did not simply create more discriminable stimuli. Without support for the lower-level accounts, we discuss the possibility that the infants processed the communicative intent of the expressions. Because angry faces pose threat and happy faces invite affiliation, expression may create motivation to individuate. Overall, the data suggest that early perceptual-social linkage in face representation can arise via a social-to-perceptual pathway. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
人类婴儿会对异族面孔产生知觉狭窄。采用配对比较任务测量婴儿注视时间，以检验假设，即向异族面孔添加情感表达能力将有助于婴儿克服知觉狭窄，重新识别异族面孔。实验 1 表明，白人婴儿观看中性亚洲面孔时会出现知觉狭窄：3 个月大的婴儿能区分亚洲面孔，而 6 个月大的婴儿则不能。实验 2 表明，白人 6 个月大的婴儿能够区分用愤怒或高兴表情描绘的相同亚洲面孔。实验 3 和 4 对用黑人面孔进行测试的 6 个月和 9 个月大的婴儿得出了类似的结果（即中性面孔出现知觉狭窄，当面孔呈现情绪时重新恢复敏感性）。实验 5 表明，白人 6 个月大的婴儿不能区分倒置的愤怒或高兴的亚洲面孔，而白人 9 个月大的婴儿不能区分倒置的愤怒或高兴的黑人面孔。在熟悉阶段，直立的中性和情感面孔的注视时间没有差异，这表明表情并没有产生更显著的刺激。同样，与倒置结果一致，对低水平图像属性的分析以及来自白人成年人对中性和情感面孔的等效成对相似性评分表明，表情并没有简单地产生更可区分的刺激。由于缺乏对低水平解释的支持，我们讨论了婴儿可能处理表情的交际意图的可能性。因为愤怒的面孔构成威胁，而高兴的面孔则邀请结盟，表情可能会产生区分个体的动机。总的来说，这些数据表明，面部表现的早期知觉-社会联系可以通过社会到知觉的途径产生。（APA，2019，所有权利保留）。
