The Other‐Race Effect in a Longitudinal Sample of 3‐, 6‐ and 9‐Month‐Old Infants: Evidence of a Training Effect |
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| Authors: | Sibylle M. Spangler Gudrun Schwarzer Claudia Freitag Marc Vierhaus Manuel Teubert Ina Fassbender Arnold Lohaus Thorsten Kolling Frauke Graf Claudia Goertz Monika Knopf Bettina Lamm Heidi Keller |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Giessen;2. Department of Developmental Psychology and Developmental Psychopathology, University of Bielefeld;3. Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Frankfurt;4. Department of Human Sciences, University of Osnabrück |
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| Abstract: | We investigated the development of the other‐race effect “ORE” in a longitudinal sample of 3‐, 6‐, and 9‐month‐old Caucasian infants. Previous research using cross‐sectional samples has shown an unstable ORE at 3 months, an increase at 6 months and full development at 9 months. In Experiment 1, we tested whether 9‐month‐olds showed the ORE with Caucasian and African faces. As expected, the 9‐month‐olds discriminated faces within their own ethnicity (Caucasian) but not within the unfamiliar ethnicity (African). In months. In Experiment 2, we longitudinally tested infants at 3, 6, and 9 months by presenting either the Caucasian or the African faces used in Experiment 1. In contrast to previous cross‐sectional studies and Experiment 1, we found that infants discriminated between all stimuli. Hence, we did not find the ORE in this longitudinal study even at 9 months. We assume that the infants in our longitudinal study showed no ORE because of previous repetitive exposure to African faces at 3 and 6 months. We argue that only a few presentations of faces from other ethnic categories sufficiently slow the development of the ORE. |
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