Perception of Face Race by Infants: Five Developmental Changes

Abstract Over the last 15 years, researchers have examined how infants respond to the social categories of faces. In the case of race, infants encounter more faces of their own race than faces of other races. This asymmetry in experience has been associated with five developmental changes in face processing during the first year of life. In this article, we describe these changes in recognition, spontaneous preference, visual scanning, category formation, and association with valence, and discuss their interrelationships. Certain individual changes correspond with one or another of the classic models of perceptual development (i.e., maintenance, attunement). But considered together, the changes suggest that a framework linking perceptual with social-emotional processing may provide a broader way of thinking about the overall pattern of how infants develop differential responses to faces of their own race that they experience frequently versus faces of other races that they experience infrequently.