Plasticity in face recognition during childhood: evidences from the reversibility of the 'other race' effect in adopted children

Résumé du document

People are better at recognizing faces of their own race than faces of another race. This so-called 'other-race' effect is present in adults but also in children as young as three years old. It can be reversed by subsequent experience with new types of faces, suggesting 'plasticity' of the face recognition system during childhood. Here we tested adopted children aged from 6 to 14 in a task inspired by the 'Warrington Recognition Memory Test', to assess the impact of the time spent in Belgium and the age of adoption on the reversibility of the effect. As predicted, adoptees behaved exactly like a control group of Belgian participants, identifying the Caucasian faces better than the Asian ones. However, different patterns of results depending on the age of adoption have been found. More surprisingly, unlike previous studies, both groups did not showed any quantitative increase of the 'other-race' effect with age. Overall, results suggested that 60 months in a new environment are sufficient to reverse the effect if the adoption happens before the child is 3 years old. Studies included that larger samples are needed to clarify these hypotheses.

Extraits

[...] The present study aimed to clarify the impact of those two variables on the reversibility of the “other-race” effect by testing adopted children living in Belgian families. More specifically, we wanted to determine what happens when adoption takes place before 3 and after 9 years and how many months or years of contact with a new environment are necessary to observe the reversibility of the effect. We hypothesized at first that the system will be plastic enough to reverse the effect if adoption happens before 3 years (Sangrigoli et al., 2005). [...]

[...] To be better at recognizing one's own race, but only if the arrival in the country happened between 5 and 23 months. From this age, adopted children are as performant as Caucasian children to recognize faces of people from Belgium. Due to the limited sample of adopted children, it remains difficult to read the lack of reversibility observed when adoption happens earlier. Moreover, it was impossible in the present study to determine if reversibility can occur earlier because of limited capacities of memorization and attention of younger children 6 years). [...]

[...] We found that 60 months spent in Belgium are sufficient to induce a better recognition of Caucasian faces by an Asian adopted child. Surprisingly, we didn't find increasing performances with age neither for Caucasian children, nor for adopted children unlike other studies (Feinman & Entwisle, 1976; Chance et al., 1982; Pezdek et al., 2003) but only a tendency to use a better recognition strategy with age, in agreement with theories concerning the development of face processing skills (Mondloch, Geldart, Maurer, & Le Grand, 2003). [...]

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