Between 6 and 9 months, while infant’s ability to discriminate faces within their own racial group is maintained, discrimination of faces within other-race groups declines to a point where 9-month-old infants fail to discriminate other-race faces. Such face perception narrowing can be overcome in various ways at 9 or 12 months of age, such as presenting faces with emotional expressions. Can language itself modulate face narrowing? Many adult studies suggest that language has an impact on the recognition of individuals. For example, adults remember faces previously paired with their native language more accurately than faces paired with a non-native language. We have previously found that from 9 months of age, own-race faces associated with the native language can be learned and recognized whereas own-race faces associated with a non-native language cannot. Based on the language familiarity effect, we hypothesized that the native language could restore recognition of other-race faces after perceptual narrowing has happened. We tested 9- and 12-month-old Caucasian infants. During a familiarization phase, infants were shown still photographs of an Asian face while audio was played either in the native or in the non-native language. Immediately after the familiarization, the familiar face and a novel one were displayed side-by-side for the recognition test. We compared the proportional looking time to the new face to the chance level. Both 9- and 12-month-old infants exhibited recognition memory for the other-race face when familiarized with non-native speech, but not with their native speech. Native language did not facilitate recognition of other-race faces after 9 months of age but a non-native language did, suggesting that 9- and 12-month-olds already have expectations about which language an individual should talk (or at least not talk). Our results confirm the strong links between face and speech processing during infancy.

在 6 到 9 个月之间，虽然婴儿在自己种族内辨别面孔的能力得以保持，但对其他种族内面孔的辨别能力下降到 9 个月大的婴儿无法辨别其他种族面孔的程度。在 9 或 12 个月大时，可以通过各种方式克服这种面部感知变窄，例如呈现带有情绪表情的面部。语言本身可以调节面部缩小吗？许多成人研究表明，语言对个体的识别有影响。例如，与使用非母语配对的面孔相比，成年人更准确地记住以前与母语配对的面孔。我们之前已经发现，从 9 个月大的时候，可以学习和识别与母语相关的本族面孔，而与非母语相关的本族面孔则不能。基于语言熟悉效应，我们假设母语可以在知觉缩小后恢复对其他种族面孔的识别。我们测试了 9 个月和 12 个月大的白人婴儿。在熟悉阶段，婴儿会看到一张亚洲面孔的静止照片，同时播放以母语或非母语播放的音频。熟悉后立即将熟悉的面孔和新面孔并排显示以进行识别测试。我们将新面孔的比例观看时间与机会水平进行了比较。9 个月大和 12 个月大的婴儿在熟悉非母语语言时都表现出对其他种族面孔的识别记忆，但不熟悉他们的母语语言。在 9 个月大之后，母语并不能促进对其他种族面孔的识别，但非母语可以，这表明 9 个月和 12 个月大的孩子已经对个人应该说哪种语言（或至少不说）有了期望）。我们的结果证实了婴儿时期面部和语音处理之间的密切联系。