Processing of face race in infants: Development of perceptual and social biases

In the first year of life, infants typically are exposed to people predominantly from their own race and rarely encounter other-race individuals. In the last decade and a half, a number of studies have found that this differential face-race experience leads infants to display perceptual processing advantages for own- over other-race faces. Infants at three months of age show visual preference for own-race faces over other-races faces, and older infants develop advanced face recognition abilities and specialized face scanning patterns for processing own-race faces. Moreover, the asymmetric face-race experience also results in social consequences. Older infants exhibit social biases towards own-race individuals, associating positive emotional signals with own-race faces and negative signals with other-race faces. These older infants are additionally inclined to learn from own-race individuals over other-race ones. Future research directions are discussed.