Studies exploring the other-race effect in infants have shown that the ability to individuate own- and other-race faces becomes lost between the ages of six and nine months, at which point individuation is restricted to recognising own-race faces only. This raises the question, then, whether after the first year development, the face processing system can be retrained to recognise other-race faces with increased interracial exposure during childhood. This section will review studies on face recognition of own- and other-race faces that have considered contact with own- and other-race groups in childhood as another variable.
Regarding the plasticity of face processing system after the first year of life, findings thus far have yet to point to a consistent conclusion. A number of studies have found that increasing early age contact with other-race groups could reduce or remove the other-race effect, but have not yet examined when or at which age the face
processing system stops being flexible. One study investigated Korean adults who had been adopted between the ages of three to nine years by Caucasian families, at which point they moved to and grew up in Europe. Findings showed that there was a reversed other-race effect, in that Korean adoptees were then better at recognising other-race (Caucasian) faces rather than own-race (Asian) faces, suggesting that the dramatically- increased exposure with the other-race group from a young age could improve one’s level of recognising other-race faces (Sangrigoli et al., 2005). Note, some limitations of methodology should be pointed out, including the fact that there were only 24 pairs of facial stimuli (half Caucasian and half Asian). Also, all of the facial images were shown including the hairline. The participant sample was also small – 12 participants in each race group, and a delayed match-to-sample task was used which is not as sensitive in measuring other-race effect and can result in a higher accuracy performance. Finally, the size of the other-race effect was between 1.3-2.3%, which is not as substantial as that in other own- versus other-race studies. Therefore, it is hard to conclude whether
contact, rather than to the overall contact the subjects had over many years, since they were adopted into Caucasian families.
To investigate the effects of other-race contact in childhood, de Heering et al. (2010) tested a group of 6-14-year-old Asian children who had been adopted between 2 and 26 months into Caucasian families living in Western Europe. They found the children to have comparable recognition of own- and other-race faces, suggesting that increasing other-race exposure during childhood (and as early teenagers) can remove the other-race effect, but it is unknown whether equivalent contact in adulthood would also reduce the strength of the other-race effect. It should be noted that in both studies, the adopted participants obtained the majority of their exposure to other-race faces rather than to their original own-race group since they had been living in a majority other-race (Caucasian) ethnicity country, as well as the adopted parents being
Caucasians, implying that daily interactions were nearly always with Caucasians. Both of these studies suggest that an advantage in processing own-race faces can be adapted by their experience with other-race faces if the exposure to other-race people begins early enough in their development. In contrast, one study examined a comparable level of contact with own- and other-race groups by testing different groups of biracial children and young adults – aged five to seven years old, nine to ten years old, and twelve to thirteen years old – whose parents were each from a different ethnicity (one African and the other Caucasian) (Goodman et al., 2007). Results indicated that both children and young adults had equally levels of performance on both African and Caucasian faces, in which African and Caucasian faces were defined as being own-race and Asian faces were defined as being other-race. No differences in recognition of parental races could be attributed to comparably frequent exposure the children had to both of their parents’ races, and other-race effect was found either between Caucasian and Asian faces, or between African and Asian faces (Goodman et al., 2007). This study supports the contact hypothesis of face recognition, however, none of the findings mentioned in this section figured out the amount and age limit of face-processing system flexibility could keep until which specific age, and none measured an adult group with limited contact during childhood but sufficient contact during adulthood.
To address this gap in literature, Chapter 5 will explore the importance of early age contact in a different way to the above studies. In this study, groups with different levels of interracial contact are tested; participants in the group with high levels of interracial contact will be Western-raised Asians born and raised in Australia (or other majority-Caucasian nations), and the ethnicity of both parents are Eastern Asians.
Importantly, to differ from adoptees with no or limited own-race exposure even at home (both adopting parents are Caucasian), and from the biracial group of participants with similar exposure to the races of both parents in above studies, in Chapter 5 the Western- raised Asians could have obtained experience with own-race individuals from family and relatives, as well as experience with other-race groups from the social environment –school, friends and their local community. The group with a low level interracial contact will be formed by two groups of participants: Western-raised Caucasians, and Eastern-raised Asians. Both will have had limited or no early-age contact with other- race groups, and are tested to explore the relationship between early-age contact and the other-race effect. I have altered the Hancock and Rhodes (2008) questionnaire to be relevant to participants’ childhood, as well as creating an adult version suited the culture setting I tested, and creating a new questionnaire regarding participants’ own- and other-race contact with classmates, friends and neighbours at primary school, secondary school and at university to examine the differences of contact levels with other-race groups in different life stages to see which age range of contact can contribute to the other-race effect.