The other-race effect (ORE) can be described as difficulties in discriminating between faces of ethnicities other than one’s own, and can already be observed at approximately 9 months of age. Recent studies also showed that infants visually explore same-and other-race faces differently. However, it is still unclear whether infants’ looking behavior for same- and other-race faces is related to their face discrimination abilities. To investigate this question we conducted a habituation–dishabituation experiment to examine Caucasian 9-month-old infants’ gaze behavior, and their discrimination of same- and other-race faces, using eye-tracking measurements. We found that infants looked longer at the eyes of same-race faces over the course of habituation, as compared to other-race faces. After habituation, infants demonstrated a clear other-race effect by successfully discriminating between same-race faces, but not other-race faces. Importantly, the infants’ ability to discriminate between same-race faces significantly correlated with their fixation time towards the eyes of same-race faces during habituation. Thus, our findings suggest that for infants old enough to begin exhibiting the ORE, gaze behavior during habituation is related to their ability to differentiate among same-race faces, compared to other-race faces.

中文翻译：

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同一种族和其他种族面孔的婴儿注视方式以及其他种族效应。

另一个种族效应（ORE）可以描述为难以区分一个种族以外的其他种族面孔的现象，大约在9个月大时就已经可以观察到。最近的研究还表明，婴儿在视觉上探索同种族和其他种族的面孔的方式有所不同。然而，目前尚不清楚婴儿对同种族和其他种族面孔的期待行为是否与他们的面孔辨别能力有关。为了调查这个问题，我们进行了一项习惯－适应实验，使用眼动追踪技术检查了9个月大的白种人婴儿的凝视行为，以及他们对同种族和其他种族面孔的辨别力。我们发现，与其他种族的面孔相比，在习惯化过程中，婴儿对相同种族的面孔的视线更长。习惯后 婴儿通过成功地区分同种族面孔而不是其他种族面孔，表现出明显的其他种族效应。重要的是，婴儿区分同种族面孔的能力与其在习惯化过程中朝向同种族面孔的注视时间密切相关。因此，我们的研究结果表明，对于年龄足以开始出现ORE的婴儿，习惯化期间的注视行为与他们区分同种族面孔相比其他种族面孔的能力有关。