The theory of perceptual narrowing posits that the ability to make perceptual discriminations is very broad early in development and subsequently becomes more specific with perceptual experience (Scott, Pascalis, & Nelson, 2007). This leads to the formation of biases (Pascalis et al., 2002; 2005; Kelly et al., 2007), including the other-race effect (ORE). Behavioral and electrophysiological measures are used to show that by 9-months-of-age, infants exhibit a decline in ability to distinguish between two faces from another race compared to two faces from within their own race. Significant differences in the P400 component revealed a dampening of response to other-race compared to same-race faces for 9-month-olds only. More negative N290 amplitudes in response to happy compared to sad faces were found for 5-month-olds only. Nine-month-olds did not show different responses based on emotion, indicating that race was interfering with the processing of emotion.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:theses-1421 |
| Date | 01 January 2009 |
| Creators | Monesson, Alexandra |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014 |
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