Infants Rely More on Gaze Cues From Own-Race Than Other-Race Adults for Learning Under Uncertainty

Naiqi G. Xiao (1) , Rachel Wu (2) , Paul C. Quinn (3) , Shaoying Liu (4) , Kristen S. Tummeltshammer (5) , Natasha Z. Kirkham (6) , Liezhong Ge (7) , Olivier Pascalis (8, 9) , Kang Lee (1)

1 University of Toronto
2 UC Riverside - University of California [Riverside]
3 University of Delaware [Newark]
4 Department of Psychology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University
5 Brown University
6 Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development [Birkbeck College]
7 Zhejiang University
8 UGA [2016-2019] - Université Grenoble Alpes [2016-2019]
9 LPNC - Laboratoire de Psychologie et NeuroCognition

Differential experience leads infants to have perceptual processing advantages for own- over other-race faces, but whether this experience has downstream consequences is unknown. Three experiments examined whether 7-month-olds (range = 5.9-8.5 months; N = 96) use gaze from own- versus other-race adults to anticipate events. When gaze predicted an event's occurrence with 100% reliability, 7-month-olds followed both adults equally; with 25% (chance) reliability, neither was followed. However, with 50% (uncertain) reliability, infants followed own- over other-race gaze. Differential face race experience may thus affect how infants use social cues from own- versus other-race adults for learning. Such findings suggest that infants integrate online statistical reliability information with prior knowledge of own versus other race to guide social interaction and learning.

Mots clés: Face perception

Domaines: Psychologie

Naiqi G. Xiao, Rachel Wu, Paul C. Quinn, Shaoying Liu, Kristen S. Tummeltshammer, et al.. Infants Rely More on Gaze Cues From Own-Race Than Other-Race Adults for Learning Under Uncertainty. Child Development, 2017, ⟨10.1111/cdev.12798⟩. ⟨hal-01569303⟩