Face Processing and the Own-Race Bias - A Study of Typical Development and Autism

Same-race faces are better discriminated and recognized than less experiencedother-races faces. This Own-Race Bias (ORB) has been robustlydemonstrated in many psychological studies yet the perceptual basis of thisphenomenon is still not well understood. Recent face perception studies havediscovered that configural properties of the face (i.e. the spatial relationsamong features) are processed differently than featural information and maybe directly tied to developmental experience with faces. This study examinesage-related changes in the ORB and seeks to determine whether a superiordevelopmental improvement in the perception of configural information inmore experienced same-race faces contributes to the emergence of the ORB.A sample of children and adults with high-functioning autism were also includedto test whether these processes differ for this population. The book isaddressed to researchers interested in development face perception and autism.