Cargando…
A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact
Poor recognition of other-race faces is ubiquitous around the world. We resolve a longstanding contradiction in the literature concerning whether interracial social contact improves the other-race effect. For the first time, we measure the age at which contact was experienced. Taking advantage of un...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6731249/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31492907 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49202-0 |
_version_ | 1783449650704941056 |
---|---|
author | McKone, Elinor Wan, Lulu Pidcock, Madeleine Crookes, Kate Reynolds, Katherine Dawel, Amy Kidd, Evan Fiorentini, Chiara |
author_facet | McKone, Elinor Wan, Lulu Pidcock, Madeleine Crookes, Kate Reynolds, Katherine Dawel, Amy Kidd, Evan Fiorentini, Chiara |
author_sort | McKone, Elinor |
collection | PubMed |
description | Poor recognition of other-race faces is ubiquitous around the world. We resolve a longstanding contradiction in the literature concerning whether interracial social contact improves the other-race effect. For the first time, we measure the age at which contact was experienced. Taking advantage of unusual demographics allowing dissociation of childhood from adult contact, results show sufficient childhood contact eliminated poor other-race recognition altogether (confirming inter-country adoption studies). Critically, however, the developmental window for easy acquisition of other-race faces closed by approximately 12 years of age and social contact as an adult — even over several years and involving many other-race friends — produced no improvement. Theoretically, this pattern of developmental change in plasticity mirrors that found in language, suggesting a shared origin grounded in the functional importance of both skills to social communication. Practically, results imply that, where parents wish to ensure their offspring develop the perceptual skills needed to recognise other-race people easily, childhood experience should be encouraged: just as an English-speaking person who moves to France as a child (but not an adult) can easily become a native speaker of French, we can easily become “native recognisers” of other-race faces via natural social exposure obtained in childhood, but not later. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6731249 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-67312492019-09-18 A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact McKone, Elinor Wan, Lulu Pidcock, Madeleine Crookes, Kate Reynolds, Katherine Dawel, Amy Kidd, Evan Fiorentini, Chiara Sci Rep Article Poor recognition of other-race faces is ubiquitous around the world. We resolve a longstanding contradiction in the literature concerning whether interracial social contact improves the other-race effect. For the first time, we measure the age at which contact was experienced. Taking advantage of unusual demographics allowing dissociation of childhood from adult contact, results show sufficient childhood contact eliminated poor other-race recognition altogether (confirming inter-country adoption studies). Critically, however, the developmental window for easy acquisition of other-race faces closed by approximately 12 years of age and social contact as an adult — even over several years and involving many other-race friends — produced no improvement. Theoretically, this pattern of developmental change in plasticity mirrors that found in language, suggesting a shared origin grounded in the functional importance of both skills to social communication. Practically, results imply that, where parents wish to ensure their offspring develop the perceptual skills needed to recognise other-race people easily, childhood experience should be encouraged: just as an English-speaking person who moves to France as a child (but not an adult) can easily become a native speaker of French, we can easily become “native recognisers” of other-race faces via natural social exposure obtained in childhood, but not later. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-09-06 /pmc/articles/PMC6731249/ /pubmed/31492907 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49202-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article McKone, Elinor Wan, Lulu Pidcock, Madeleine Crookes, Kate Reynolds, Katherine Dawel, Amy Kidd, Evan Fiorentini, Chiara A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact |
title | A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact |
title_full | A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact |
title_fullStr | A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact |
title_full_unstemmed | A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact |
title_short | A critical period for faces: Other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact |
title_sort | critical period for faces: other-race face recognition is improved by childhood but not adult social contact |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6731249/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31492907 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-49202-0 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT mckoneelinor acriticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT wanlulu acriticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT pidcockmadeleine acriticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT crookeskate acriticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT reynoldskatherine acriticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT dawelamy acriticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT kiddevan acriticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT fiorentinichiara acriticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT mckoneelinor criticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT wanlulu criticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT pidcockmadeleine criticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT crookeskate criticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT reynoldskatherine criticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT dawelamy criticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT kiddevan criticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact AT fiorentinichiara criticalperiodforfacesotherracefacerecognitionisimprovedbychildhoodbutnotadultsocialcontact |