The Other-Race Effect in a Longitudinal Sample of 3-, 6-and 9-Month-Old Infants: Evidence of a Training Effect

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 3months, an increase at 6months and full development at 9months. 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 9months 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 9months. We assume that the infants in our longitudinal study showed no ORE because of previous repetitive exposure to African faces at 3 and 6months. We argue that only a few presentations of faces from other ethnic categories sufficiently slow the development of the ORE.