AUTHOR=Suhrke Janina , Freitag Claudia , Lamm Bettina , Teiser Johanna , Fassbender Ina , Poloczek Sonja , Teubert Manuel , Voehringer Isabel A., Keller Heidi , Knopf Monika , Lohaus Arnold , Schwarzer Gudrun 

TITLE=The other-race effect in 3-year-old German and Cameroonian children

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Psychology

VOLUME=5

YEAR=2014

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00198

DOI=10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00198

ISSN=1664-1078

ABSTRACT=<p>Recognizing individual faces is an important human ability that highly depends on experience. This is reflected in the so called other-race effect; adults are better at recognizing faces from their own ethnic group, while very young infants do not show this specialization yet. Two experiments examined whether 3-year-old children from two different cultural backgrounds show the other-race effect. In Experiment 1, German children (<italic>N</italic> = 41) were presented with a forced choice paradigm where they were asked to recognize female Caucasian or African faces. In Experiment 2, 3-year-olds from Cameroon (<italic>N</italic> = 66) participated in a similar task using the same stimulus material. In both cultures the other-race effect was present; children were better at recognizing individual faces from their own ethnic group. In addition, German children performed at a higher overall level of accuracy than Cameroonians. The results are discussed in relation to cultural aspects in particular.</p>